The Quick answer: Animation codec. You may not like it, but it supports an Alpha channel and keeps 100% of the quality. It does what you need.

Workflow is: Animation with synthetic AE elements, composited on DV elements.

Long side- one by one.

Video that starts on a DVD

This is MPEG-2. It's a very lossy format to begin with. Can you get the original footage in the original format? You shouldn't be too worried about losing any further quality if your original is going to be transcoded MPEG-2. If this is what you're going to use...MPEG-2 that you're going to transcode...you might as well transcode it to DV. It'll be fast + cheap.

So, the standard DV+Animation workflow should work great- especially if your source is MPEG-2 via DVD. This is what 99% of people use (not the mpeg-2, the DVD+animation)

What are you finally going to use this as? DVD? Digibeta? Knowing this format helps pick a hardware format. It's ugly to transcode from one Raw format to another - it's best to always work in that finished format.

Now, FCP is primarily optimized to act as a DV program. It's capable of doing much, much more...but 99% of it's usage is DV.

The AIC (Apple intermediary codec) was developed to handle HDV in a non-b/p frame codec (all I frames). FCP 5 can handle the MPEG-2 of HDV on the fly...but it takes quite a bit of horsepower. AIC is how iMovie and FCE HD handle HDV.

FCP has always meant to have agreement of capture format + sequence format. Make sure stick to the Apple prebuilt sequence formats if you want RT capability (at all!).

The Pixelet Codec was developed by Pixar for animation to preserve quality and reduce file size.

Using AE?
Use Animation @ 100% - that's smaller than uncompressed. Runs about 1 gig/min.
DV is 5:1 Compressed and runs about 5 min/gig (but does not support an alpha channel)

It sounds like when you say "if I'm keying footage in AE" are you actually talking about creating an alpha channel to your footage....Keying generally refers to the creation of a black and white channel that gets inserted into the RGB file...so it becomes RGB + Alpha.

Animation is absolutely optimized for video, it is a lossless compression. But it was never meant to run at RT. For what it's worth, uncompressed video was usually meant to be accelerated with hardware. Apple, for the 'professional' formats are using either DVCPro 50 or Sony's iMX format.

The workflow would be Animation + DVCPRO 50.

Now, as to the 'codec' talk...
Apple has to keep inside of QT, a number of legacy codecs that you have no need for.

Legacy codecs: Cinepak, Compnent Video, Graphics, VIDEO
Codecs shared with a 'still' format: BMP, JPEG2000, PNG, TGA, TIFF, Planar RGB

Distribution formats (meant for web, etc.): DivX, 3ivx, MPEG-4, Sorenson, Sorenson 3

Legacy hardware formats: Motion JPEGA, Motion JPEGB

Specific uses (such as video-conferencing): apple VC H.263, H.261, 262, 264

Independent format meant for compositing: Animation

Pixar generated optimized for animation: Pixelet

Apple uses (with FCP) P-Jpeg as an offline codec for DV

Current Hardware formats:
Avid (1:1, DV, Meridian Compressed, Meridian Uncompressed)
DV/DVCPRO (Pal+ntsc, HD 1080+720, DVCPro 50)
MPEG IMX (30,40,50) (sony IMX decks/cameras)
HDV formats: AIC, HDV 1080+720
Targa Cine YUV+YUV 16 (additionally cinewave)
*Uncompressed 10 bit + 8 bit

The hardware formats are meant to be utilized with specific decks, and almost never have the ability to imbed an alpha channel

The advantage of Animation..it's uncompressed no matter which of these formats you use and it supports an alpha channel. Need to see it playback in RT? Render.

Last update: 08:45 PM Tuesday, October 18, 2005