Scratch and After Effects Workflow

[Many Moosh]

Hey guys,

Can anyone chime in with their experience/procedures/workflow between Adobe After Effects and Scratch.


We do most of our comp work with AE and we are looking for a dedicated color grading software (Speedgrade or Scratch). How is the integration (if any) between Scratch and AE?

Thanks guy,

manymoosh

 

[Greg M]

You can use Scratch to conform your EDL and grade your footage, then export the final results as a DPX sequence for work in AE.

 

[Adam Glick]

an alternative is to create the DPX frames (as stated above) but export them in flat "log" colorspace.

This will preserve the dynamic range of your footage and provide more latitude in your compositing workflow.

Then render your final comps back to DPX in AE (you could apply your "linearization" (LIN) in AE if you wanted to)

You can then run your finished sequences through Scratch for final color grading/conform...

There are many different workflows, any one of them might be "best" depending on the specifics of the project.

 

[Many Moosh]

thanks guys,

we don't have a Red yet, we're still working with DV and HDV, so I'm not up to par with the terminology. Is DPX an image sequence?

Thanks

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

DeePX

DeePX

Yes, DPX is a file format typically used in the motion media world for creating high precision image sequences. It like a TIFF or TARGA sequence. The upside for DPX is a relatively efficient log based lossless compression scheme that preserves quality at lower bandwidth than TIFF (for example a 4K frame in TIFF is 48MBs and in DPX the same frame is 32MB). The other, perhaps more important upside is wide support in the professional DI environment. Be aware that the white point, black point and gamma in DPX land is not a set thing - just to confuse things there are several "standards" - and I use that term loosely.

If you have a show that has the budget, horsepower and storage space to go to a frame based workflow rather than clip based - make sure that any other post facilities you are working with are on the same page with you in terms of the exact nature of the DPXs - it is not something you want to have to fix later with transforms - you can do it but it can really complicate your life if you start mixing in footage from other sources.

In our shop we stay clip based unless we need to do a specific thing that AE excels at, then we only create enough DPXs to get that piece done. Now if someone wants to donate a 100TB SAN...