Looking for the End-All - Be-All Solution to CS3 Workflow Issue
 

Hello Everybody,
I know this has been covered in a couple different forums and I've read articles describing the process. However, I am having difficulty with my CS3 workflow. I purchased the CS3 Master Suite and really enjoy each individual program. However, I am getting really annoyed with attempting to use them together. I love Premiere and I love After Effects....but the two of them together is making me CRAZY!!!

For a workflow, this is what I have been doing:
1) Capture all footage in Premiere Pro
2) Cut footage into clips that I know I want to use and put them each in a seperate sequence.
3) Import the sequences into After Effects for color correction
4) Create a new Premiere Pro CS3 project and import the After Effects Compositions
5) Edit using the compositions

There has to be a better way. There just has to be! I feel like I'm spending 80% of my time rendering precomps and sequences when I should be putting together edits. I am really getting frustrated and am really looking for the best process for what I want to accomplish.

Can anyone please clear this up for me? I would really appreciate it a TON!!! One of the reasons I purchased the master suite was so I could use the programs together easily. Now I'm finding that its almost more trouble than its worth. :(

Any help you can offer would be much appreciated!

One thing you might try is not color correcting until your done editing. That's always the last step for me. No need to color correct footage that may be cut out.

Capture all your footage, do your edit, then open the project in AE when finished editing.

BTW, are you just not happy with the color correction tools in PPro? I realzie that aren't as powerful as what AE offers in Color Finesse, but I can usually get the results I need right in PPro. Maybe try that, then just take the more difficult shots over to AE, and dynamic link them back into your PPro timeline.

Also, I just got Colorista from Red Giant - it's a great tool to have. Between that and what PPro has, I'm finding myself being able to do more and more right in PPro.

Okay -- So what you do is you completely edit your sequence. I mean everything from dissolves/cuts/graphics.....everything. After you are finished, you import your entire project file into After Effects. You apply any effects that you want.

After that - you save your project file and import it into Premiere Pro to render out in a specified format. Is this what you usually do?

Thanks for your help!

Yeah, that would be one way to work. Although, you don't really have to import the project back into PPro when done in AE. You could output from AE a file into whatever format you needed.

If you had to go back to tape, then just import into PPro the output file you create in AE.

The problem could be that once done in AE, any effects or color correcting you add using anything not available in PPro may not come back through into PPro. Thus, making an uncompressed file of your finished video in AE, import that file into PPro, and output to tape that way would be the safest way.

No sense in going uncompressed from After Effects into Premiere Pro. Just export a DV AVI file that allows Premiere Pro to avoid any rendering at all. It will just export it as it is.

Okay, thank you so much for your help! Hopefully my next project will go much smoother!!