PPro project into AE translation problems

[Kevin Monahan]

Sounds like a Dynamic Link issue. Are you using Production Premium or the Master Collection or are these standalone applications?

Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Kevin,

I’m not using Dynamic Link – just straight ‘import premiere pro project’ into AE.

BTW – I’m using Production Premium.

Thnx,
James.

[Alex Udell]

Hate to even have to suggest it….

but you might have to export/relay those timewarp clips as new media in PPro prior to moving to AE.

You should do this on a duplicate of your master sequence to avoid loosing the soft edits version.

out of curiosity,
Is this CS5 or greater?

What flavor of source media?

Are the ones that work a different flavor of media from the ones that don’t?

Alex

[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your reply. I think the problem is that the offending clips are actually subclips within premiere. There are loads of subclips in the project (original source files are all several mins long), but it only seems to be the ones that also have timewarp applied that can’t seem to remember where their in/outs should be.

I tried converting to master clips in Premiere, but for some reason this just converts the – for instance – 5 second subclip into a 10 min master clip (basically the original source and it trashes the in/outs)

Not sure how to get around this – please advise if you are a subclip editing guru!?

Thanks,
James.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Oh – CS4.2.1 and It’s a mix of XDCAM HD422/50mbps and ProResHQ, with the odd h264 and AVC clip in there. The problem timewarped subclips are derived from the XDCAM sources….HOWEVER, the other subclip XDCAM stuff is ok!?!

[Alex Udell]

The Timewarps likely require rendering in PPro right?

It’s a bit of hack, but….

Is there any way you can force a render, then find the render in your scratch disk, copy and paste it to your media folder and import it into PPro and cut it into the timeline (even on its own layer)?

then you should be clear to pull that into AE.

I know it’s a hack….I know…..but it’s the quickest thing I can think of right now….

Alex

[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Alex,

Thanks again for your message. I guess my only option is to pre-render and replace all the offending clips. Bit of a pain with extra files on my drive and I really wanted the ability to manipulate/tweak and render the timewarps directly within AE.

Whilst we’re at it – do you know what the point is of the ‘convert subclip to master clip’ function? Searched around the web for an answer and it seems like a fairly pointless process, as it simply converts my shortened subclip into the original 5-10 min length master clip, so I have to then go in and find my in and outs and set them up again. Kind of defeats the object doesn’t it?

Also – when ‘collecting’ my project at the end of the project, is there an elegant way of PPro and AE working together to collect all my files, or do I need to do a collect in AE, then a collect in PPro….therefore doubling my archived project files?

[Alex Udell]

I’ll scratch my head on both of those.

Some thoughts….

Essentially….with sub clips, if you deleted (that’s delete, not “make offline”) the parent clip out of the project panel, sub clips would also go bye bye. By converting to a master clip, it’s now essentially and independent instance and the other master can be deleted from the panel. (note that I’m speaking of clips, not attached media).

Are you saying that it removes in/out marks or are you suggesting that it puts the clip back to the full media extents (frame range)? If the latter, it kind of has to do that. A master clip has a different icon in the project panel than a subclip. If it changes the icon, but didn’t put the media extents back, you’d have no indication that there was media beyond what you were seeing in the source viewer.

Your media management question is a good one. I don’t have an elegant solution for that one.

Todd?

Alex

[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Alex,

OK, this is my current workflow….

• several 5-10 min supplied source footage QTs.
• each one of those long master clips I am going through and logging/chopping smaller clips out and making dozens of subclips
• I then have hundreds of subclips which are just what I need in my timeline to edit with
• the several long master clips remain in my project for now
• When I am done with the offline I am importing my PPro project into AE to do grading/fx
• When doing this (or dynamic linking the sequence flattened) some of my subclips are slipping in AE and so my edit is pretty much useless.
• So I went to convert my subclips to master clips, so that presumably these subs then become totally independent of their masters (you would think PPro would then render these and create new smaller QT files on your disk)
• However instead of this it seems to be simply converting my subclip – which is say a particular 5seconds of my master – into a different ‘type’ of virtual reference file (still dependent on my long master clip) and it also trashes the in/outs I created which give that subclip a reason for existing!
• So now I basically just have a 10min master clip and ALSO a 10min subclip of the exact same thing…which I then have to search through again to find my in/out points!?!

Sorry if I am being a bit slow with this, but I really struggling to see the point in this ‘convert to master clip’ function!

Essentially to do what I’m trying to do (I don’t really want to do a destructive edit like this, but no choice if pulling in to AE) can only be achieved by manually setting my work area bar over each clip I want to ‘pre-render’, take all the effects off it so they are still live in AE, then render out, pull back in and put in place of my subclip, then apply all the effects to that clip again? Seems bonkers!

[Alex Udell]

Hi Jimmy….

got ya…maybe this will help with some of the confusion

Sub clips in PPro (like in FCP) are “virtualized” in that they are dependent on the original media file and the frame constraints on them are only virtual. Hence this is why there is a function in a sub clip that allows you to re-access the original media frames if necessary. Really the function a sub clip is to make it easier to deal with LONG media files in the source viewer (marking and scrubbing with better resolution).

It sounds like what you ought to do is “Create a trimmed version” of the project via the Project manager (I think it’s under the edit menu).

This would create a new Project file and “consolidated” media set that you could then use as the basis of what to take into AE. Yyou should be able to do it via copy without deleting the original stuff to be safe.

There have been reported issues with this, for example, I know it didn’t used to support HDV (GOP based media) and I haven’t used it in a while. And I don’t know how well it plays with sub clips.

So you’ll need to try some tests I think to see if this is what you are looking for. But I think this is more of what you are describing.

Alex