Free plugin for loading EDLs into After Effects

[Dj Joofa]

I saw some users discussing a need for loading EDLs (perhaps generated from RedCine, or any other software) into After Effects. To serve that purpose I have written a plugin for loading CMX 3600 EDL into After Effects that I am going to make freely available here for Reduser users.

A preview of the actual plugin is below where in the background you see FCP window and an EDL is exported and the foreground window shows AE with the EDL loaded:

Need to finish off a few things before I post it here. I do have some confusion about the format of an EDL, so any knowledgeable users kindly send me an email at djjoofa@yahoo.com so that I can incorporate that and finish off this plugin.

NOTE: Work in progress includes a plugin that shall try to hide the effects of that notorious purple sun issue with Red camera, yes you read correctly a free plugin for taking care of purple sun problem coming soon to a PC near you.

 

[Mike Prevette]

This is great Joofa! I can't wait to take it for a spin.

 

[MikeHedge]

joofa! thank you!!!! the sun issue would be great to have a solution to it... this will work in AE CS3 on xp and vista ???

 

[laguun]

Joofa, thank you *very* much. That is very kind of yours.

 

[Sean]

Hell yeah. I would love something like this.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

this would be awesome

 

[number6]

Joo-fa! Joo-fa! Joo-fa!

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Joofa, drop me a line if you have EDL questions - I think I've developed a reasonably good understanding of it (although I may be mistaken).

 

[Dj Joofa]

Thanks guys for your support. I am really glad that people are interested in this project. I just started it a few weeks back and an initial offering will not have all features of a mature product such as Automatic Duck XML import AE from FCP, as they have years of development behind them. However, with your feedback it shall reach there in a short span of time.

I purposely chose EDL as there was no point in doing XML for AE as there is no gain in replicating the effort of Automatic Duck. In addition, EDLs are more widespread, and can be generated by number of products including Red's own software. However, that also presents its own unique challenges, as a lot of required information embedded in XML import from FCP is missing in a typical EDL export, and I have to resort to doing some guess work.

In the start I am going to restrict myself to Quicktime files only as I need to have access to timecode track and there are 3 options available to me:

(1) Quicktime component SDK (Quicktime Movie Tool box)
(2) libavformat/libavcodec from FFMPEG
(3) my own weird way of doing stuff.

For expediency, I immediately dropped (3) for timecode track access. I ruled out (2) as many QT files are just reference files (what Red calls proxies) and the last time I worked with libavformat/libavcodec they did not have direct support for reference files. So I have to settle for (1), but that is fine as QT toolkit is available on both Windows and Mac.

In addition I am currently treating "cuts only" EDLs. However, that shall be rapidly expanded to handle dissolves, filters etc.

joofa! thank you!!!! the sun issue would be great to have a solution to it... this will work in AE CS3 on xp and vista ???

Yes.

Joofa, drop me a line if you have EDL questions - I think I've developed a reasonably good understanding of it (although I may be mistaken).

Sure, thanks for your help.

 

[Kreisky]

thnx Joofa !

 

[laguun]

Thanks guys for your support. I am really glad that people are interested in this project. I just started it a few weeks back and an initial offering will not have all features of a mature product such as Automatic Duck XML import AE from FCP, as they have years of development behind them. However, with your feedback it shall reach there in a short span of time.

I purposely chose EDL as there was no point in doing XML for AE as there is no gain in replicating the effort of Automatic Duck. In addition, EDLs are more widespread, and can be generated by number of products including Red's own software. However, that also presents its own unique challenges, as a lot of required information embedded in XML import from FCP is missing in a typical EDL export, and I have to resort to doing some guess work.

In the start I am going to restrict myself to Quicktime files only as I need to have access to timecode track and there are 3 options available to me:

(1) Quicktime component SDK (Quicktime Movie Tool box)
(2) libavformat/libavcodec from FFMPEG
(3) my own weird way of doing stuff.

For expediency, I immediately dropped (3) for timecode track access. I ruled out (2) as many QT files are just reference files (what Red calls proxies) and the last time I worked with libavformat/libavcodec they did not have direct support for reference files. So I have to settle for (1), but that is fine as QT toolkit is available on both Windows and Mac.

In addition I am currently treating "cuts only" EDLs. However, that shall be rapidly expanded to handle dissolves, filters etc.



Yes.



Sure, thanks for your help.

hey joofa,

ever thought about supporting discreet combustion? i would -sure- want to pay (advance) even for a totally primitive edl-> combustion standalone with tons of bugs.

(copy from another topic)

Hi Edgar,

for a -powerful- combustion station, the following elements are highly recommendable:

- a fast and large raid, S-ATA is the sweet spot.
As combustion cant cache everything in ram, fast disk i/o is crucial.
We are using (among others) areca in 8 to 16 disk configurations. An decent areca controller is 300-600€. A Terrybyte disk is 150-200€. So with 1500~4000€ an array very potent (much faster than 2K, slower than 4K) raid in the 8-16 Terrabyte Space gives the data necessary throughput.

- an Open GL graphics card. Quadro is the sweet spot.
Open GL acceleration will allow you to have realtime feedback at 2K, adjusting colorcorrection on the fly in 2K. Without Open GL it will be slower than RT in 2K.
Even as Nvidia rips off quite a bit for its quadro drivers (the boards themself use the regular Geforce chips), the sweetspot is the 4500/4600. Dont buy at list price, you will often find them in the 500-700€ space. They deliver excellent 2K RT with combustion. Even better are the 5x00 series, however they come at a massive premium.

- an HD-SDI video i/o
if you want to benefit of a calibrated monitor, there are 2 principal ways of adding one to combustion.
a) use a aja or decklink video i/o board. they are inexpensive (800-1600) and allow i/o with hdcam (sr) and other mastering VTRs/DDRs. downside is that they are not -perfectly- smooth under combustion, 24P works but here and there a single frame will be shutter while playback of unrendered corrections. Nothing really problematic, but good to know.
b) add a nvidia sdi to your quadro. downside is that you loose one monitor (combustion works excellent with 2+1 monitors, or even 4+1) and that the nvidia sdi boards are have indeed nasty pricetag. Advantage is that the playback is even better.
be aware however that you will only have excellent -progressive- display with both options. interlaced will be displayed in progressive with all pros and cons of that.

- a 64bit OS and 6, better 8 GB ram
combustion should have as much ram it can adress in its 32bit mode for itself, so 4 GB for the application and 2-4 GB for background tasks and OS are recommendable. with today ram prices thats a no-brainer anyhow.

- a quadcore cpu, 2.4-3Ghz. 8 cores are not necessary, but will help several plugins which cant benefit from the GL. They are not mandatory however.

- one or more inexpensive background slaves.
combustion comes with free network render licenses, managed through the discreet backburner server. so mini-quadcores (2.4 Ghz minimal setups, mini disk, 2-4GB ram, on.board graphics) are an excellent expansion of your investment.

With such a system, including software still in the $$$$ space, you get outstanding creative tools.

i dare to say that for -complex- colorcorrections such VFX system beats specialised DI tools, they simply have more powerful tools.
combustion is one of the sweet spots for replacing a DI system with VFX tool, as it offers:
- interchangeable and adjustable LUTs, for precision work.
- the exact primary and secondary color correction tools of flame/inferno (discreet color corrector and color warper)
- 4K (and up to 10K) resolution.
- 10, 12, 16bit or floating point precision quality in RGB.
- all the essential tools in a very sophisticated implementation (discreet g-mask, discreet tracker)
- an interface for many creative plugins for colorcorrection (tiffen filter suite etc)
- good measurement (discreet waveform/vectorscopr in the system. many $$.$$$ DI systems sadly still mis that).
- grain and noise management (including grain match/degrain, once more the same modules as in flame/inferno)
- a really powerful vector and pixel paint module for these advanced gradients and masks.
- solid support for DI fileformats as DPX, including their setup.
- a good proxy system, which allows to generate, work and switch between 1080/2K/4K.
- excellent render quality of all its modules
- a fast and streamlined user interface w/o dialog-boxes and pop-up windows.
- adjustment of color correction on the fly while playback
- stores and presets for colorcorrections and basically all other functions.
- different views of source, result, positions in time and a/b split display functions available simultaneously.
- an editing operator for the last minute adjustments
- timewarp/ramp functionality.
- sound. this however is minimal.
- global operators and nodes (as: change -all- colorcorrection of type X by 10%)
- transfer modes for combining layers
- background and network processing for massive workloads.
- powerful titling tools, from technical useful stuff as TC burn in to 4K closing title etc.
- A full 3D VFX compositing system incl. schematic if you need it
- footage independent operators, allowing swapping footage -below- an existing CC/Grade.
- and finally, blur, mask and cc in ~RT with 2K i/o.

The downsides of such a system compared to a specialized CC system are:
- no advanced human interface (a la blackboard for baselight or cooper)
- no direct EDL i/o support (you will want to have an Adobe (4K 16bit) or Apple (2K 8bit) NLE in the background, enhanced with the Automatic duck plugin. Or an assistant. For a fullfeature with 1000-2000 edits, an good assistant should need 1-2 days setup. I actually prefer assistants over plugins, as they can prepare the jobs better (already placing CC and CW modules on all clips, rebuilding more complex dissolves)
- no -instant- output to VTR/DDR of mastered quality.
- some missing navigation functions as jog/shuttle
- has to precache here and there
- sunstained playback only for the cache area (4GB are suddenly not much anymore if you playback multilayer 2K)

Depending on the job, i have to say that i even prefer such a system sometimes over its specialized brothers and sisters (as lustre, speedgrade, scratch, color etc), as it gives even more artistic freedom, at the cost of some ergonomics. I have mastered several shorts and fullfeatures in the last years on discreet VFX systems, including some award-winning stuff which really had *VERY* complex CC. For bread and butter tape-tape or dailies operation however the specialized tools are to be preferred. Also, directors and DPs becoming -familiar- with the added possibilities -will- often use them. Even slicker results may be the benefit of this, but usually it takes 20-30% time more. And always make sure that the client/customer/partner understand the route you go - if he "only" wants primary cc and tape-tape workflow he might be disappointed.

From the price/quality/creativity breakdown however i wouldnt know what to recommend else today. Many c* cracks consider it to be "the industries best kept little dirty secret".

 

[Dj Joofa]

ever thought about supporting discreet combustion?

...

- no direct EDL i/o support (you will want to have an Adobe (4K 16bit) or Apple (2K 8bit) NLE in the background, enhanced with the Automatic duck plugin. Or an assistant. For a fullfeature with 1000-2000 edits, an good assistant should need 1-2 days setup. I actually prefer assistants over plugins, as they can prepare the jobs better (already placing CC and CW modules on all clips, rebuilding more complex dissolves)

Hello Lagunn, thanks for the detailed information. I can certainly look into Combustion. I did a preliminary search on Combustion SDK on Google and could not find a native Combustion SDK, and found that some people were saying that Combustion uses Effects API from After Effects. This is both good and bad:

Good: Because if it is indeed true that Combustion uses AE effects API then the same effects plugin can be used with Combustion. The same as sharing effects between Premiere and AE.

Bad: Support for AE effects API does not help. After Effects importer/exporter API is different than effects API. So unless either of the following is true it will be difficult:

(1) Combustion also supports AE import/export API (much like the AE effects API)
(2) Combustion has native API SDK support for import/export.

But my search is continuing on this topic and I shall get back at you shortly.

 

[Dj Joofa]

Did a test with an EDL export from FCP with 3 cuts vs. the same export by Automatic Duck. The comparison image is for the After Effects timeline is below. The top timeline is mine and the Automatic Duck timeline is below.

As seen, at least for this test the EDL import plugin vs. Automatic Duck is frame accurate. This was an 29.97 fps export. However, still some confusion exists in my mind regarding timecode interpretation and drop frames, etc., for other frame rates. I guess I should start contacting those generous people who have kindly consented to help me with these issues.

Stay tuned.

 

[Priit Poldmaa]

Joofa,

Combustion project is a ASCI file and may be it is possible to generate a complete project with CC or Color Wraper fx already applied.

Just thinking
Priit

 

[Dj Joofa]

Joofa,

Combustion project is a ASCI file and may be it is possible to generate a complete project with CC or Color Wraper fx already applied.

Just thinking
Priit

Priit, thanks for the info. I think it should be doable to read an EDL/XML and convert to Combustion projection. We can certainly look at many Combustion files and try to understand its format and even reverse engineer the way it expects the data to be formatted.

 

[laguun]

Priit, thanks for the info. I think it should be doable to read an EDL/XML and convert to Combustion projection. We can certainly look at many Combustion files and try to understand its format and even reverse engineer the way it expects the data to be formatted.

Hi Joofa,

Gerrit Corsmeyer wrote some nifty AE/Fusion/Combustion interfacing for several NLEs for a company... he knows quite a bit about these formats.
http://www.render-domina.de/

if you need to, i could try to bring him in touch with you.

 

[Dj Joofa]

Hi Joofa,

Gerrit Corsmeyer wrote some nifty AE/Fusion/Combustion interfacing for several NLEs for a company... he knows quite a bit about these formats.
http://www.render-domina.de/

if you need to, i could try to bring him in touch with you.

Laguun, thanks indeed about your generous offer. I checked out the url you provided. Let me do some homework and see what exactly I need to ask Gerrit Corsmeyer and I shall certainly get back at you.

 

[Dj Joofa]

Demo video: Loading EDL into After Effects from FCP

Demo video: Loading EDL into After Effects from FCP

I have posted a video on Youtube that explains the workflow for loading EDLs into After Effects. Video shows myself doing a live demonstration of creating a CMX 3600 EDL in Final Cut Pro and then loading that into After Effects. Available at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruDZ8c09KSA

Youtube quality is a little blurry and you can't read the text in menus, etc., though sufficient for seeing what is happening. Went to RedRelay website to upload a high quality version, but apparently that website is for those chosen few who have the Red camera inch:

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Went to RedRelay website to upload a high quality version, but apparently that website is for those chosen few who have the Red camera inch:

Send Chris and email - I'm sure he'll hook you up, for a good cause at all!

 

[Dj Joofa]

I have setup the following website for After Effects EDL Import Plugin:

http://www.djjoofa.com/

The plugin is complete functionally and is in testing phase. Some optimizations may be done, but it is functional for cuts only EDLs. Please check back on the above-mentioned website later.

I do not have a huge infrastructure for testing and I am thinking of making it available for general public for testing purposes before a final version is released.