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Activity Forums Adobe Premiere Pro Chopping up a long clip into smaller clips

  • Chopping up a long clip into smaller clips

    Posted by Eric Nord on July 10, 2013 at 7:30 am

    I have a 10 minute mpeg-2 video clip that I want to chop into smaller clips and then do some animations with them in After Effects. There will be about 50 clips total.

    My question is…
    What is the best workflow for chopping up this 10 minute clip, and then moving the clips into AE?

    I tried creating subclips in Premiere Pro and then dynamic linking them into After Effects, but it didn’t work. I did some research, and apparently I’m not alone in having this problem. I just want a quick way to chop the files and then edit them in AE without losing any quality.

    So what would be helpful is either an endorsement of Prelude, or a good workflow for going from Premiere to After Effects. Links are more than welcome. 🙂

    Eric Nord replied 12 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Walter Soyka

    July 10, 2013 at 4:12 pm

    [Eric Nord] “So what would be helpful is either an endorsement of Prelude, or a good workflow for going from Premiere to After Effects. Links are more than welcome. :-)”

    If you don’t want to use Dynamic Link, you can import the Premiere Pro project into Ae.

    I’d cut up your source footage in Premiere and lay it into a sequence. Save the project.

    Jump over to Ae, and use File > Import > Adobe Premiere Pro Project. You can bring in the whole project or just a specific sequence. Each sequence from the .prproj will now be an Ae comp.

    Walter Soyka
    Principal & Designer at Keen Live
    Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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  • Eric Nord

    July 10, 2013 at 7:30 pm

    @Walter

    Thank you!

    I’m not doing any narrative editing/sequenceing in Premiere. I simply need to chop up a large clip (10min) into about 50 short clips (1-2 seconds). And then I will do all the sequencing in After Effects.

    Using your suggested method, I would need to create a separate sequence for each and every subclip I want to export to After Effects. Otherwise, all the subclips get mashed together. I’m wondering if there is a way to export smaller clips/subclips without creating a sequence for each one.

    I’m new to video editing and motion gfx, but it would seem like I should be able to dynamically link subclips without nesting them in sequences.

  • Curt Massof

    July 11, 2013 at 4:14 pm

    Using Walters method you can cut the clip up in one sequence in Premiere and then import that sequence into AE. It will create a comp with all of the edits separated into layers in AE. No sub clipping needed.

    Or you could just import the clip into AE and cut it up there.

  • Eric Nord

    July 11, 2013 at 10:13 pm

    Thanks Curt. Both you and Walter are spot on.

    In this particular case, I want each clip as a separate composition in AE, therefore it makes sense to put each clip into a sequence in Premiere before importing it into AE. Although maybe there is a script in PP or AE that might facilitate this process. So I’ll have to look into that as well.

    That said, for most of my projects, it looks like importing a single sequence from Premiere will do the trick.

    But what if I wanted to chop the file into independent files? Would it be best to chop it up in Premiere and then export with a lossless or near-lossless codec?

    Has anyone used Prelude for creating clips from large files?

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