Integration with After Effects -- Not Like I Was Hoping

[Jordan Orberg]

Hey Everybody --
I posted a thread a couple weeks ago about working with Premiere and After Effects. I received a lot of helpful advice from a couple of people about what kind of workflow to go with. They basically suggested that I edit my project in Premiere Pro - Import the project file into After Effects - Do All Color Correction/Effects work - Render The File out of After Effects.

However, I'm still having trouble with this workflow. For one, some of my transitions between footage will not work when I import the project into After Effects. None of my titles work after I import the project into After Effects.

Can anyone offer any helpful suggestions as to what I should do? I don't want to go back through and create all the titles and transitions in After Effects. Can anyone help? Thanks! :)

[Jiri Fiala]

You are lucky to even have your project properly imported into AE. Most of the time I try to do this, footage files load fine into AE, lay onto timeline in proper times but with wrong In/Out points (!).

Transitions and most effects won't work. PPro and AE aren't nearly as integrated as Adobe wants us to belive.

If you've got this far in your project, you can do your CC/FX work in AE, render, and put the rendered file back to Premiere. Or, you can render your titles from Premiere with transparency and overlay them in AE.

[Jordan Orberg]

Wow - Seriously?!? I thought I was doing something wrong! You mean this is the full extent of integration with After Effects? They really sold me on the ease of integration too. This pisses me off.....

They better make a good bit of changes for CS4, or I'll be looking somewhere else.

[Jiri Fiala]

There ARE nice things like "Edit Original" and Dynamic Link (although it's awkward and seems to be much improved in CS4 screenshots). I think that for example Final Cut/Color integration is more straightforward.

I'm looking forward to CS4, it seems to have MANY niceties Premiere's sorely lacking now.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Not to argue with Jiri, I had quite a bit of good luck with PPRo and AE integrationb. yes, the titles don't migrate but transitions and effects move from one to the other. I'm actually quite impressed.

[Steven Gotz]

There is generally an advantage to exporting a file from Premiere Pro to use in After Effects. Especially if all you are doing is color correction and maybe some animation.

On the other hand, I prefer to color correct entire clips and then import them into Premiere Pro, either with an exported file, or Dynamic Link. (depends on how many clips since DL is processor intensive)

[Mitchell Skurnik]

Originally Posted by Steven Gotz

There is generally an advantage to exporting a file from Premiere Pro to use in After Effects. Especially if all you are doing is color correction and maybe some animation.

On the other hand, I prefer to color correct entire clips and then import them into Premiere Pro, either with an exported file, or Dynamic Link. (depends on how many clips since DL is processor intensive)

I agree. Edit your video, then when your done import the raw footage into After Effects, color correct then either replace that footage or use dynamic link like Steve says.

[Jiri Fiala]

Exactly. I prefer using files instead of Dynamic Link though.

[Eric Shepherd]

What format do you guys render to when going back n forth?

I've been trying to figure out this whole integration thing for months. I like PPro for editing and AE for tweaking, coloring, effects, etc. Why can't it dynamic link back in the other direction?! It would seem to easy to edit your project in PPro and then link it into AE for coloring and correcting things that mess up an otherwise great shot.

I have a 13 meg PPro project for a movie I'm working on and I *thought* I could import just a sequence from it into AE, but the other day I tried it and it imported all my footage as well. Well started to, I decided to cancel it because I didn't want 40 gigs or whatever of footage going into AE, when I only needed about 500 megs of it. :)

What does CS4 do different?

Eric

[Paolo Ciccone]

Eric, you don't need to export the footage, at least not with CS3. You import the PPro project into AE by simply importing the project file. The footage clips must be included or there will be no reference to them. In this regard Dynamic Link doesn't move away from how you would set up the sequence yourself. AE refers to the original clips so it doesn't matter how big they are, your disk space doesn't change. And yes, when you import it you can select which sequence you want. CS4 is not out yet.

[Eric Shepherd]

Thanks Paolo,

Yep, I know CS4 is not out, but others were mentioning the differences, so I'm wondering what they are. The info must be posted somewhere. :) I got some Photoshop CS4 info a couple months ago at Photoshop World, looks nice.

Is it possible to import a PPro sequence into AE and not get ALL of the footage of the PPro project, but just the footage from that one sequence? That's the real problem I ran into, otherwise it would work great I think.

Eric

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Eric Shepherd

Is it possible to import a PPro sequence into AE and not get ALL of the footage of the PPro project, but just the footage from that one sequence? That's the real problem I ran into, otherwise it would work great I think.

No, I don't think that's possible but fortunately AE arranges the files in its own folder so it shouldn't be a problem to keep the project organized

[Eric Shepherd]

Yeah the problem isn't so much that it's unorganized, it's that I don't want to bring 40 gigs or so of footage into AE, when I only need 500 megs for the shot. Seems like overkill or something, not to mention how slow it is to have it interpret all that footage, makes for a bigger project file, etc. And then it wouldn't stay updated dynamically like a dynamic link would, would it? I can see a number of things that make this less than appealing.

Eric

[John Stakes]

Originally Posted by Mitchell Skurnik

I agree. Edit your video, then when your done import the raw footage into After Effects

as a project file or as an .avi?

Originally Posted by Eric Shepherd

I don't want to bring 40 gigs or so of footage into AE, when I only need 500 megs for the shot.

I kind of cheat by importing the project, and then I just cut the footage as needed, slide it to the beginning of the timeline, and then export it. I have a general idea of how many frames I need to export, so I just cancel it when I see fit. I know there is a better way, come on everyone...lets conquer this workflow!

-JS

[Everts Alredjo]

Originally Posted by John Stakes

as a project file or as an .avi?





I kind of cheat by importing the project, and then I just cut the footage as needed, slide it to the beginning of the timeline, and then export it. I have a general idea of how many frames I need to export, so I just cancel it when I see fit. I know there is a better way, come on everyone...lets conquer this workflow!
-JS

Import it as a project file *.*prproj .
The cheating technique is a waste of time .Just go to Projects /projects manager / here you can trim your project after you've done your editing.So you don't have to import the whole enchalada.The project gets alot more managable.After fx has the same feature File /collect files

The titles dont get imported because Prem Pro uses a different text engine then afterfx AFX cs2/cs3 uses the same as photoshop.Please Adobe fix this.
I dont know why anyone would want to use the transitions especially if you will be finessing in After fx.Most effects do work in aftre fx .You can actually copy and paste clips between the two apps . Try that with final cut.
Also never had a a problem with footage having different IO points after importing in afterfx. Make sure you dont have sequences sharing the same name.It can get confusing if your project is large.
There is a AE script out there that will find cuts if you rendered your edit out to one avi file.Google it.
Dynamic link: never used it never will, edit original is your friend and so is MS trusty notepad.