Quite a few look really interesting and I’m hoping to dig in as soon as I get my upgrade in place.

The section on Modifying Text is especially useful for day to day hacking.

This will definitely make things a lot easier to develop tools, and it opens up a whole new slew of possibilites for Web 2.0 mashup tools and explorations when combined with After Effects Socket or new HttpConnection support. kuler explorer anyone? If you’re a scripter, you owe it to yourself to check out the ExtendScript Toolkit (ESTK) 2.0 there are a lot of features that sort of “hide” in Extendscript that aren’t obvious in the After Effects CS3 scripting guide(pdf link).

This is the first fruit of my experimentation. I often need to make a tape log of a sequence in Final Cut Pro, and a quick way to get the sequence details into a text file could be useful. The most approachable way to address the problem seems to be with markers. You can store all of the values I need for a tape log in a marker – item number, name, description, length and the starting timecode. So, that’s how we’ll approach it.

1. First, we’ll need to add a marker at the time in the sequence we’d like to add an item. A quick way to add a marker is to hit the m key twice, or go to the menu item Mark:Markers:Add . When we do that we’ll get something that looks like

2. We’ll want to rinse and repeat for each item we want in the log.

3. Export an FCP-XML file of just the single sequence of interest. A possible upgrade for this action would be to do a version where we pick the sequence, but for now the Action is just set to work with a single sequence. Any version of the Final Cut XML spec should work just fine

4. Launch the workflow, markerToLogWorkflow.workflow which should look like this.

5. Run the workflow by pressing the run button. You can set options by selecting or deselecting the checkbox for items. When I run the workflow I get a text file looking something like…

That’s about it. Next up will probably be digging into Indesign Automator Actions so that we could flow our log into a nicely formatted document. Another interesting Action might be to do this in reverse adding Markers from a producers Excel, Word Doc, or XML File, but I’m happy with this as a start.

So, what do I think about Automator? It definitely takes a little getting used to, but if Apple continues to improve features, I’ve heard rumors of cool Leopard upgrades, then I think it will be a good application to add to the mix.

Zip Archive of Action and Workflow

You’ll need to move the markerToLog.action file to your Library/Automator folder for the Workflow to work.

Unfortunately, the post was more of a tech demo of the kinds of things that were possible with After Effects scripting and less of a practical demonstration for non-technical users. I still urge non-technical folks to dip their toes into the scripting waters, it can be really rewarding, but the challenges presented in “rolling your own” in this situation may be a bit much. So, I decided to write a small application to provide a way for readers who don’t want to deal with the scripting hassle to use some of the techniques I described in the article.

FCPToAE (working title) is an application for OSX 10.4 and above designed to create a .jsx file from a Final Cut XML file for import into After Effects without the hassle of scripting the different parts yourself.

How to use FCPToAE

1. Download and run the application2. Open a valid Final Cut XML file exported from a sequence with File:Open. It’s important that you export a sinqle sequence from FCP and not a project or you will get an alert when you run the .jsx file. Any version of Final Cut XML (1-3) is fine.You should end up with something that looks like this:

For this version, the only column that is editable is the first column which allows you to make an individual clipitem active or inactive in After Effects. This is handy for not importing FCP native items like Bars and Tone and Slug, although there is rudimentary support for placeholder images for those items.3. Click the Export to After Effects button and save the exported .jsx script4. In After Effects, select File:Scripts:Run Script File and navigate to your exported script file.5. When I run from the above, I get something that looks like this:

In After Effects:Preferences make sure that “Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network” is checked and “Enable Javascript Debugger” is unchecked. “Enable Javascript Debugger” being unchecked allows us to substitute placeholder images if we are unable to get a valid path to your footage. You might want to enable it if you want to troubleshoot a path problem.FCPToAE is designed to work on the same machine that the project was created. If you run the exported .jsx file on another machine the script will attempt to use a placholder image which you can replace with File:Replace Footage in After Effects. If you run the script from Windows you will also need to replace the placeholderImagePath variable in the script with a valid Windows path and substitute the correct image and path in var placeholder in the import section of the script.

I’m not sure where this application will end up. I’m contemplating producing some shareware workflow applications and functionality from several of the small utilities I’ve released will definitely be wrapped in. I’m working on improving my Cocoa interface design and programming skills and slowly but surely feel like I’m approaching the point where there might be a product in there somewhere. I’d love to hear from readers about the kinds of workflow problems they’d like solved in creative workflow applications.

I do know what it is not. It’s not a replacement for Automatic Duck. Wes Plate has put years of work and effort into his product and it shows in the polish and constant new feature introduction with each version. If you use this functionality daily, you owe it to yourself to not try and cut corners and buy Automatic Duck. It’s really worth it.

UPDATE 10.11.2007 Today is the first public release of the AE CS3 stand alone version of FCPToAE. This version uses the native E4X xml parsing in AE CS3 to handle xml parsing. Move the unarchived .jsxbin to the scripts folder, run from the Scripts Menu and point the script to your exported FCP-XML file. New experimental features in this version include Cross dissolve support, and keyframed values for Scale, Rotation, Positon, and Anchor Point (keyframed ease is due in the next version). Since this is the first public release I would expect bugs and would appreciate bug reports.

CS3 and above script

deprecated legacy version for AE7

zip archive of FCPToAE(AE 7 )

Since my updates on this script have slowed dramatically I’m posting the source to the CS3 version of the script. If you make any improvements send them my way and I’ll integrate them. I’m also open to contributing to an open-source project for Final Cut to AE scripting if anybody wants to get the ball rolling on a code depository, etc.

01.30.2009-Chris Roe from croe design contributed sub-clip support and text layer importing.

Please send beta feedback and bugs to dale(at)creative-workflow-hacks(dot)com.
changelog of previous bug fixes and changes

The cool thing about Motion files is that the project format is a well formed XML file that Quicktime understands how to render. That’s how you get cool products like Digital Heaven’s Automotion. If you’ve got more of a DIY bent, that also opens up a lot of possibilities for creating cool projects via XML transforms and scripting. More to come as I explore some of the possibilities.

Update 03.08.2007

While I was researching, it looks likes the folks at motionsmarts have already been hard at work with cool scripts for Motion. After Effects Position to Motion Position script looks particularly useful for the kind of stuff I do.

It’s a nicely paced tutorial with a lot of useful information marred only slightly by too many required fields in the registration. Interface gripe – Is anybody else tired of web forms with every country in the world included in alphabetical order and the most common countries like I don’t know, the US and the UK requiring days of scrolling. I’m sure all those users in Antarctica are happy to not scroll.

Update 03.02.2007
Martin Baker writes a nice scrolling tip to address the above

Avoid scrolling tip:
Click the menu once and release mouse. Press a letter on the keyboard and the list will scroll to it.

It’s a beginner level tutorial, but you’re likely to pick up at least a few tips. I’ve gotten to where I play this kind of stuff in the background while I work as an alternative to music. Yeah, I’m a geek.