Advice on round tripping footage from FCP to AE and back

[Byron Nash]

I just got done completing my first visual effects on Red footage. Going into it I thought I would take dpx files of the raw Red images and work with those in AE. Then render out dpx again to send back to the edit and final color grading. We couldn't really get that whole process to work very well and I'm trying to figure out how to improve the process. One issue was that they did the color grading at the very last step so I was having to update my shots at the last minute to incorporate color changes. The editor was having trouble bringing the dpx files out of AE so we ended up just rendering to lossless animation and dumbing it down to 8bit on output(from AE).

Here are my questions:

1. Do you normally add your cg elements to a color graded plate or the 'raw' plate?
2. What's the best way to render out of AE to get it back into Apple Color/FCP and maintain color bit depth?
3. If I work in Rec. 709 in AE, shouldn't there be no color shift from the incoming plate to the final FX render?

Thanks for any input. This has been a learning experience for sure. And I felt like I knew a little about it going in even. Maintaining color gamut AND reproducing without color shift is the tricky target I'm after.

 

[Kwan Khan]

Hummm ...

Edit: Hummm = Testing/looking for a solution
Thanks for your comments

 

[Yousuf Abbasi]

Edit: Okay thanks for looking into it.

@ The original poster: I myself would like to know the answers to your questions as well... anyone?

 

[Byron Nash]

Thanks for the help Kwan.

 

[Kwan Khan]

Hey Byron,
FCP ----> Premiere Pro CS4 ----> AE
http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f1510v1003

you might need to check out Automatic Duck's (Pro Import AE 4.0)
http://www.automaticduck.com/products/piae/#details

Demo Video tutorial link:
http://www.automaticduck.com/products/piae/PIAE4-FCPToAE.html

 

[Byron Nash]

We do have a copy of Automatic Duck. The issue isn't really finding the shots or copying over sequences. Most of the stuff is short specific shots that are getting VFX. We didn't try AD but are you suggesting that AD might help us with gamma shifting?