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Premiere –> After Effects Dynamic Link Pain in the #$%
So, I’ve edited a project in Premiere Pro CS4 (footage is 5d mkii converted to mpeg-2). Edits like a charm.
But, I need to add curves, motion control, etc. I’d also like to render out of AE.
I’ve tried:
1. Dynamic linking PP into AE, then copy and pasting my entire timeline. Problem: the graded footage doesn’t show back up in the timeline in PP. Instead, it’s contained within the dynamically linked file which has NO transitions, the timing is messed up, etc.
2. Dynamic linking AE into PP, after having copy and pasted my footage from PP. I then paste the footage back into PP, but none of the grading appears. And all my transitions are gone. Plus, when I try to render, the entire picture gets squished.
3. Selecting each clip and “Replace with after effects composition” works like it should…until either/both programs crash and cause all kinds of dynamically linked issues. Plus, I lose transitions doing it this way and when adding back in the transitions, I get an error “not enough frames, will double frames…” and it never looks right.
My ideal workflow would be to simply finish the edit in PP, move the whole project to AE, and edit each clip, all while retaining the transitions from PP. And then render/export out of AE.
Any help??? It seems this should be, by far, the simplest every-day task with these two programs. Am I missing a newbie trick? Thanks!
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5 Replies
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The only thing that works for me in this situation is to do the following:
Open AE and under file click “Import Premiere Pro Project”, find the project and open.
It will take a while to load.
Once loaded, this next step is very important, find the one file that says “Sequence 1” and double click that file.
Your project will load in order.
The do all the things you want to do in AE and render and output from there.Some drawbacks that I have found is that many of the transitions do not work in AE, I’m not sure how or it you can fix that.
Best of luck!
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Hey Danny, thanks for the tips — yes, that does get really close to what I was looking for.
But you’re right: the transitions are the biggest issue. Premier’s transitions just aren’t right — I mean, the simple fade to black, cross fade, etc. is all I need.
Maybe I’m missing something basic? Is there a better way to grade and edit footage? Otherwise, I can’t see how Premiere/AE is functional for the majority of users.
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Hey Josh,
You should be able to do fade to black and crossfades fairly easily in AE using keyframing and the opacity settings. Crossfade would be one clip fades up as the other fades out (you might have to stretch the fronts and backs of those clips a few frames though so they overlap for that to work). AE does have some transitions too, might see if they are in there.
It can get rather timely if you have a lot of clips to deal with but this is the only way I have been able to successfully merge PP and AE.
Best of luck
Danny Winn
youtube.com/DannyWinnVideo -
Hey Danny,
Yeah, it looks like it pretty much needs to be worked-around like that.
I did find a 3rd party transition effect that does roughly what you describe:
https://www.videocopilot.net/presets/
They’re like the opacity adjustment, but more filmic. Works perfectly for me, and no crashes, unlike the meth addict Dynamic Link.
The biggest pain is that, in AE, especially when working in HD, the frame rate jitter makes it near impossible to see how the transitions look until they’re finally rendered. Adobe really needs to get its act together on this issue.
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Yeah I agree man,
I wish PP and AE were all one big program that you could do everything in, but I’m sure it would take a NASA computer to run such a thing.
It sure seems that they could make it a lot easier than the current way of doing it though.
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