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After Effects -> Premiere Pro -> Encore via Dynamic Link?
Approximately a year ago, I spent a great deal of time on a home video project, opting to create it primarily with After Effects because of the superior editing flexibility, the unambiguous support for 1920×1080, and the absence of guesswork over whether a video is using 16-235 or 0-255 colorspace (Premiere Pro was crushing my whites, and I didn’t like that). I was using a CS3 package.
When it came time to render, I eventually figured out how to rework it as 1080i60 and frame serve it to Encore. Unfortunately, Encore was an astonishingly buggy app, and it would always spit out an error upon completing the first of two passes. Lacking a resolution, nor any real forum talk on the issue, I settled for AE’s own built-in H.264 codec, which was single pass only.
Now here we are, more than a year down the road, and apparently AE is still unable to do two-pass H.264. (…) Meanwhile, I need a solution. I don’t have CS4 right in front of me yet (going to get a glimpse soon), but here’s what I was thinking.
Step 1: Somehow utilize the finalized .AEP project file within Premiere Pro, either by loading it directly if it has that capability (I doubt it, since it’s 0-255 colorspace), or using Dynamic Link.. again, if that’s even possible.
Step 2: Put in some chapter marks, add a second audio track (don’t laugh, but I’m going to be adding a director’s commentary so I can whine about what an immense pain the project was to complete), and then use Dynamic Link to feed the result to Encore.
Step 3: Hopefully Encore has fewer bugs, or at least is now able to two-pass H.264 encode a frame-served video without crashing after a single 24-hour (!) pass.Anyone have any takes on this? Suggestions? Experience?
You may be thinking.. render the whole thing as raw. I calculate that it would take 2.667 TB. Storage is easier these days, but it’s not that easy. 2.7 TB is just absurd as the idea that Adobe doesn’t have a solution for me. So there’s got to be a solution.
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2 Replies
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Marc:
In CS4, you can encode an AE comp directly to H264 with 2 Pass VBR by using Adobe Media Encoder in standalone mode. You don’t even need to render an intermediate file. Launch AME and open the AE comp through Dynamic Link, pick you H264 encoding options and submit. So it’s only a couple of additional steps, and you get background encoding of your AE comp to H264 or other format, with more advanced encoding options. Of course, you can render an intermediate file and use that in AME if you prefer.Encore should be able to do 2 pass VBR encoding to H264 fron a Dynamic Link Comp without problems. If it doesn’t, make sure you send a bug report to the Encore team:
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Thanks for the quick reply (before I get some sleep myself).
Encore CS3 was probably meant to be able to render two-pass from AE, but really, I’ve played around with AE6, AE7 and AE CS3, and each one of them has had its own bugs which I’ve needed to develop workarounds for. Indeed, just toying with CS3 recently, I started getting a “not enough storage to complete this task” bug, at roughly the same spot in a given project, every time I tried to render it. I did have enough storage, needless to say. My solution was to render it in two (raw) parts and splice them together in a separate project. Just an example.
Adobe Media Encoder, eh? Intriguing. I’ll be certain to check it out. Hopefully it will be able to render an H.264 encode which Encore likes, and can use in a Bluray image.
But a standalone media encoder won’t let me add chapter marks (specifically, i-frames where I want them). Or perhaps it will? Premiere Pro had a good system. And then there’s the matter of the second audio channel. I guess I’ll have to wait until I can sit down in front of CS4.
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