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  • After Effects collaboration best practices.

    Posted by Jeremy Garchow on November 16, 2017 at 5:31 pm

    Sharing projects with other artists is pain staking.

    Relinking huge projects takes 10 minutes due to the way After Effects treats media.

    Importing XMLs/projects creates all kinds of duplicate media entries in the project leading to more confusing and explodes organizational methods apart in to masses of messes.

    For those of you that need to share projects with other collaborators, how do you do it with a 10 minute relink session, and keeping project organization relatively sane?

    And has the MXF relink bug been fixed in the latest version of After Effects CC?

    John Williams replied 5 years, 3 months ago 4 Members · 12 Replies
  • 12 Replies
  • Walter Soyka

    November 16, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    [Jeremy Garchow] “For those of you that need to share projects with other collaborators, how do you do it with a 10 minute relink session, and keeping project organization relatively sane?”

    We store our AEPs and assets such that they always have a common relative path. Because everything in the project always follows the same relative path, no relinking is necessary, even when we go from artist to artist or platform to platform.

    This shows the general idea (simplified a bit from what we actually use):

    – My Organized Project
    — Assets (all assets for a project are organized within)
    — Audio
    — Image
    — Vector
    — Video
    — Working Files
    — AEP (AEPs go here)
    — C4D
    — Editorial

    Walter Soyka
    Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
    Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
    @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

  • Jeremy Garchow

    November 16, 2017 at 6:31 pm

    ^

    pain staking = painstaking

  • Jeremy Garchow

    November 16, 2017 at 6:35 pm

    Thanks Walter and Dave.

    But this is what I don’t understand. The media is organized the same in all locations, short of renaming all the drives the same name, which is impractical. No matter what, I have to relink, and everyone else has to relink. These are all offsite collaborators, this of course does not pertain to in house collaboration.

    I get an Ae file from an artist, I need to relink it (or if I import their file, then it also reimports the media even though the media is already in the project, creating dupes). Any attempt to reduce those dupes is an exercise in futility, or lost organization.

    Does Teams rectify this at all?

  • Jeremy Garchow

    November 16, 2017 at 6:36 pm

    [Dave LaRonde] “Same thing applies to to new AE versions — don’t bite on the initial release. Wait until the first –or even better, the second — major bug fix.

    After Effects feels like a constant state of bug fix. I have not upgraded to the latest version, but the relinking bug that is present in 14.2.1 is a major workflow hinderance.

    In this case, while yes, there may be other bugs, I’d rather update to something that gets rid of this relink bug. Plus, other artists have already upgraded, so know I may be forced to update.

  • Walter Soyka

    November 17, 2017 at 11:10 am

    [Jeremy Garchow] “he media is organized the same in all locations, short of renaming all the drives the same name, which is impractical. No matter what, I have to relink, and everyone else has to relink. These are all offsite collaborators, this of course does not pertain to in house collaboration.”

    Jeremy, is the AEP located on the same volume as the footage?

    Walter Soyka
    Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
    Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
    @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

  • Jeremy Garchow

    November 17, 2017 at 1:46 pm

    Most often.

    Do you have any experience with Cloud Teams?

  • Walter Soyka

    November 17, 2017 at 3:12 pm

    [Jeremy Garchow] “Importing XMLs/projects creates all kinds of duplicate media entries in the project leading to more confusing and explodes organizational methods apart in to masses of messes.”

    To address this issue, try File > Dependencies > Consolidate All Footage.

    [Jeremy Garchow] “Do you have any experience with Cloud Teams?”

    No. We’re looking at it for next year, but we haven’t jumped in yet.

    Walter Soyka
    Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
    Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
    @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

  • Jeremy Garchow

    November 17, 2017 at 4:06 pm

    [Walter Soyka] “To address this issue, try File > Dependencies > Consolidate All Footage. “

    Right, but Ae is does not discriminate which copy of the file it takes out and it sometimes leaves all of the instances.

    So, if you have a nicely organized project, it can get messy very quick, especially for the kinds of things that I have been working on lately which involves moving entire edits or parts of edits to and from After Effects.

    It sounds like I am not running in to anything out of the ordinary, and it’s just the way we have to work. I was indexing if Teams, which touts more collaboration, would resolve some of the relinking.

    Thanks for your help,

    Jeremy

  • Silvain Monney

    November 4, 2019 at 8:23 pm

    Hi Jeremy,

    I’m having exactly the same problem here. Did you manage to find a solution? I can’t see how to possibly collaborate in a good way if it’s impossible to copy some comps without having to import the whole project…

    Thank you in advance

  • Jeremy Garchow

    November 4, 2019 at 9:58 pm

    [Silvain Monney] “Did you manage to find a solution?”

    Nothing fantastic.

    Depending on the project, I will collect the media and create a whole new set fo media to work from. I then add new elements to the (Footage) > “Folder” and have the receiving artist do the same.

    It’s super clunky and prone to error. See that Ae 2020 just came out, but I have no idea if the relinking is any better.

    Jeremy

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