Appending ASP files

[Hellyar]

Hello,
In the training tutorials, it's said that it's better to create separate ASP files for each scene of a multi-scene animation.
How does one assemble them, afterwards, into a single file/output, please?
Thank you.

[slowtiger]

You render video files and put these together in a video editor.

[synthsin75]

In a pinch, you can use AS to assemble the rendered videos.

[Greenlaw]

If you don't have access to something like Vegas, Premiere or Final Cut, there are a number of low-cost and even free video editors out there. I would do a search for video editors to learn more. A few years ago, I know some friends who were working with a free editor called LightWorks. I've never used it myself though so I'm not sure how 'friendly' it is. Personally, I like Vegas Pro, which has a very intuitive UI based on Sony's music editing program Acid. They have cheaper 'consumer' versions of these programs which have most of the features of the Pro version and the same UI.

Some users like to render video files straight out of ASP but I prefer to break my scenes into multiple layers (using Layer Comps) and render image sequences (.png files) because I do a lot of additional animation and fx work in compositing programs like Fusion or After Effect. From there, I'll render video files from for editing in Vegas, so the procedure is really not that different.

Yes, you can use ASP as a video editor too but it's better to use a dedicated program for this. If you're on a budget, Blender may be another program to look into. It's generally considered a 3D animation program but it has compositing and video editing modes, and it's free to download.

Hope this helps.

P.S., there was a thread in this forum a few months ago about video editors, and there were a lot of interesting recommendations from users. Try searching for video editor.

[Hellyar]

Many thanks to you all. Much appreciated.

I use Premiere Pro professionally so assembling multiple outputs isn't a problem. I just wondered if I could keep it to first generation, if possible.

I'll investigate the png approach which, I understand, can preserve transparency. It might be better than ASP 32-bit Quicktime output.

Thanks again.

[hayasidist]

PNG (or any other lossless codec) is way way better than typical QT (but there is a PNG codec option in QT).. if you're going to export from AS to input to another program (such as Premiere) you don't want the output "degraded" (compressed by a lossy codec) first - because it's more than likely that the output from a compositor will be compressed -- and if you start with low quality input, the output will be even lower quality.

[Greenlaw]

If what you're really concerned with is getting the best output quality for your editorial program, I agree with hayasidist, PNG .mov should work fine and it will be significantly smaller than uncompressed video. (Although a compositing program can certainly output any format you want, more so than ASP is currently able to.) BTW, on a Windows system, you'll need to run ASP in 32-bit mode to output a .mov file; on Mac, you can use 64-bit.

Some other good options:

- ProRes if you're on a Mac. Technically, you can output to ProRes on Windows too but you'll need a third party program. (I like to use FootageStudio 4K.)

- On Windows, I also like to use the Lagarith codec for final output. It's intended to be an archival format (i.e., it's processor intensive) so I also render out proxy videos for realtime editing. To do this, in Fusion, I make two different output nodes in my comp; In AE, just enable two output presets. You can output to Lagarith with ASP too using .avi, but you'll need to render the proxy version in a second pass. When I'm done editing with the proxies in the editor (Vegas Pro in my case), I swap directories to the higher-res, lossless Lagarith files and output the highest quality from my editorial software. To do this, both versions should have the same exact file name and extensions of course. Lagarith is free by the way.

- Avid's DNxHD is another good free solution. Very high quality and, like ProRes, in wide use by the industry. Unfortunately, it's not lossless.

- You could also just import PNG image sequences directly, although for editorial programs, a movie file is recommended. Image sequences are really more useful for compositing.

Hope this helps.

G.

P.S., a little more info if you use Vegas. Vegas has it's own proxy generation system which normally works well. I find it less suitable for animation though because if you revise your animation, the proxy doesn't not automatically update--you need to delete the proxy and have Vegas regenerate it. IMO, it's easier to just have your animation or compositing program render the proxy version at the same time as your 'master' file.

Actually, I just remembered that I used the free Virtual Dub program to batch render proxies for me when we were making the HLF titles. That actually worked really well. I'll post a workflow video for that sometime soon. (Before I forget it.)

[Hellyar]

Thank you, once more. You are very generous with your time and expertise.