General workflow

[Stacey Dunleavy]

I realize AE and Premiere have their strengths. How do the pros have them interact with each other? For example, I’m making a simple “how-to” video, about 5 minutes long. I have two pieces of footage on which I’m adding an intro, bottom third, and transition (maybe funny asides and an outro). Would you do it all in AE, or just add the intro and outro on to a Premiere project?

[Stephen Smith]

I’m not sure I completely understand what you are trying to do. But if this is a video where you are doing editing and want graphics at the start and end…I would do all of my editing in Premiere. I would create the graphics in After Effects. If you need to see some of the footage while building the graphics I would use the “Send To After Effects” round tripping feature to send the footage you need to AE. Then get it back into Premiere for final export. Hope this helps and best of luck.

[Stacey Dunleavy]

Thanks for the input… I’m so new at this, and I dont’ know if there’s a “right” way to do it, or just what’s “right” for a specific project…

[Stephen Smith]

Roger that. In my opinion. Editing and audio work is faster and easier in Premiere than it is in After Effects. So I do all of my editing in Premiere. For graphic work I find After Effects better but there is a learning curve that might not make it worth it depending on what you want to do. It is nice that the two programs work with one another.

[Stacey Dunleavy]

So, how would you merge both components together? Create the opener in AE, and export as MP4? Is there the same variety of text effects for the lower third, or should that be an exported composition from AE as well?

[Stephen Smith]

You have two choices, when you do “Send To After Effects” in Premiere (PPro) it sends what ever you selected and then you can work with it in AE. When you go back to PPro you will notice that you now have an AE file acting as a clip. So any changes you make in AE will then update in Premiere. The other option is to do what you said, which is to export out the clip from AE and import the movie clip into PPro. The advantage to that is big bulky AE files don’t play well in PPro. Or if you revisit the project in the future you will have to relink every thing in AE in order to just watch it in PPro which trust me is a major pain in the ….

[Stacey Dunleavy]

Thanks – still learning… My brain is overloading…

[Brendon Murphy]

I agree – definitely edit in Premiere and then prep your graphics in AE. For the lower third and transition, just create them in AE and then export in a format that supports transparency. Then bring them back into premiere. I often avoid using the dynamic link because things can indeed break… you can just export a draft of your premiere timeline if you need a reference for your graphics timing in AE.

[Stacey Dunleavy]

Thanks Brendon!

Like I’ve posted elsewhere, I’m trying to pivot to motion graphics from a career in print. So, I’ve come up with the idea of simple videos on a YouTube channel to display my evolving technique. And, of course, now I realize I need a lot more background skills to show off just the mograph portfolio…

My brain hurts… <g>

[Stephen Smith]

Luckily there are lots of incredible resources to learn online. Best of luck!