Premiere Pro CS4, Media Encoder and AE

[Vince Becquiot]

You have a few options:

1- Do the keying when the edit is absolutely final, and import your Premiere project in AE, then do each clip separately. You can copy and paste effects from clips that you know came from the same scene.

That’s the usual keying workflow. Do your titles in AE since Premiere title won’t get transfered to AE.

2- Copy and paste clips from Premiere to AE. You can C&P from the Premiere project panel to the AE project panel (works best if you are using subclips), or C&P from the Premiere timeline to an AE cmposition.

3- Export each clip from the source window (double ckicking on timeline clips), queue them, and export to quicktime animation or AVI uncompressed. Then replace clips in Premiere after AE export.

4- Get a copy of Primatte and key in Premiere, great keying results but funky interface in Premiere.

5- Don’t use the Premiere keyer.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[John Frey]

Thanks, Vince, for the help. If at all possible I would like to stay in Premiere for the keying. Primatte is sold through Red Giant for $500 and is listed as working with After Effects – no reference to Premiere as a plug-in. Unless there is another good keyer for Premiere, I will have to key in Keylight/After Effects.

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[Vince Becquiot]

It looks like they took Premiere out of the list, probably for the best, but was still usuable, in fact I just tried it and it works, just not very well…

Looks like AE and Keylite is your best shot. Try importing the Premiere project in AE, it will break down all your cuts into layers and keying will be most efficent that way. Just keep in mind that you can’t easily go back to Premiere and start editing agaon after that.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Eric Jurgenson]

Personally, I’d render each trimmed clip out to a Targa sequence with Premiere/AME (no compression with Targa files, so no quality is lost- Besides, AE hates long GOP compression like AVCHD). You can do your key in AE with a stand-in background, then render out as a Targa sequence (foreground only) with an alpha channel. Bring the Targa sequences back into Premiere, and replace the original foreground clips, but keep the original backgrounds. You will retain the Keylight key quality, with the flexibility of working in Premiere.

[David Dobson]

Edit in Premiere Pro CS4 all the footage that needs to be keyed. Then in After Effects use File>Adobe Dynamic Link and chose Import Premiere Pro Sequence. You will the get a single track of video. Apply the Keylighter effect to the entire sequence. Provided the green screen is pretty similar in all the different shots that’s it for keying. Then export the composition as lossless+Alpha. Import that file back into PPro (as a file, not as an AE project – you can only dynamically link on one direction.) Create a duplicate of your edited sequence (very important as the edit is dynamically linked to AE) and rename the new sequence and put the AE file over the edit in the new sequence (it’s useful to have the edit as a reference for edit points) – turn of the edited track and voila! It’s all keyed. Render and serve.

At least that’s how I am choosing to go about it. If you need to change the edit, you go back to the original sequence and re-edit. Then go back to AE and open the project – it automatically updates – if the timing changed you do have to adjust that in the comp.) Then export the file to the same name. Go back to PPro and the sequence with the key has been updated as well. Render again – of course. I am doing a bunch of short sequences this way and it seems to be working well. For a very long form edit – it might not work so well and you might want to buy a PPro Keyer for more flexibility. There are a couple I’ve seen at Toolfarm.com

[John Frey]

Thanks to all of you for your input. Too bad Keylight can’t run in PPro! Am testing all approaches.

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[John Frey]

I imported my Premiere Pro sequence into AE and applied Keylight. Things look good for most clips. In AE’s File dropdown, I do not find Lossless Alpha as a choice in exporting the Comp. What am I missing, here?

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[David Dobson]

You need to put the comp in the render queue for export (ctrl-M). The drop down for the Output Module should have a Lossless with Alpha for AVI and Quicktime output.

[John Frey]

David – this project is going to both Bluray and 720 x 480 Widescreen. When rendering from AE back to PPro, I need to keep the footage in 1920 x 1080 at the highest quality possible to continue the edit with eventual output. Will either the Quicktime or AVI give me this, as it all started as AVCHD? Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[David Dobson]

Yes. Just make sure your AE comp size matches the AVCHD PPro sequence size. (Its actually 1440×1080 at 1:1.33 — the same as the HDV 1080i60 preset.) AVI and Quicktime using Lossesless will give you uncompressed (except for the frame size squeeze)HD quality back to PPro.

You could also create a 1920×1080 AE comp and the AVCHD footage should fill it out so long as AE interprets it as 1.33 aspect ratio; but when you bring that back to PPRo and into your AVCHD sequence – it will have to be squeezed back to 1440 – so you gain nothing and mught add artifacts that could mess up the keying process. Always best to maintain one size and aspect ratio throughout.