Footage ©Kuhn Foundation, from the series Closer to Truth Cosmos. Consciousness. God.

I am always on the lookout for things that can make my life easier… sleep in a can, comfortable shoes, great software.

If you use Final Cut Pro and After Effects… do I have a find for you! I just finished a new book called Video Made on a Mac, and in the process of writing about Motion Graphics workflows, I’ve discovered an absolute gem, from a little place called Popcorn Island.

From Final Cut Pro to After Effects

Getting your footage from Final Cut Pro to After Effects is a very common workflow. In fact, so many people choose to work this way that there are several free and for sale workflow tools on the market. But I have a new favorite.

The script Final Cut 2 After Effects supports the following features:

Cross Dissolve Transitions

Basic Editing Translation

Segmented Clips

Basic Keyframes

Time Remapping

Nested Sequences

Multiple Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios

Audio Channels

Name Length Error Checking

Support for PAL25 and 60

Oh and in case you missed it… FREE

Here’s how the process works:

Download and install the After Effects scripts from here. Launch After Effects and Final Cut Pro. Open a Final Cut Pro project with media you want to exchange. Select one sequence in the Browser. Choose File > Export > XML. Choose XML Level 4. Target a location and click OK. Swith to After Effects and choose File > Scripts and select the newly loaded script (PI_FCP2AE.jsxbin). Navigate to the XML file you created in step 5 and click Open. The footage and a new composition are created in After Effects. Explore the composition and check the results.

Enjoy…

Also, be sure to check out the new book, Video Made on a Mac. More than 400 pages and 5.5 hours of video on Production and Postproduction Using Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite.