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Workflow question
Hello All
I have a question about using After Effects and Premier Pro together. I am hoping someone can enlighten me as to the most efficient and professional way of creating video with these 2 tools.
I have learned a lot about after effect, and have some good experience with Premier, but I have started working on projects that I want to use both to produce a quality result.
I have video that is taken on a regular consumer digital camera, I know that this is where I am losing some quality on my end result because most of the cameras I get footage from are not HD. That is fine, I can live with that (for now) but what I am trying to figure out is where do I start?
Usually I have been using after effects to create titles and “super” transitions. Then I place my compositions in premier on top of or in between footage in premier.
The first problem I have always had is any titles I create turn out a little “jaggy” in premier, they usually look great in AE. How do I eliminate that and get nice clear, crisp text titles? Is there something in the resolution or pixel aspects that I should change or watch for? I make the after effects compositions at the same pixel sizes and aspect ratios, why then do I still get “ugly” text?
The second is work flow. Currently I am working on a project where I have footage that I am stabilizing in after effects. I have now imported the compositions to premier. I intend to “cut” the compositions as needed to edit the footage together. Would it be better to do the editing in after effects and then drop that composition into premier with my other footage, or should I render out an avi of the entire deshaked composition footage and import that into premier and then edit it? Which gives better results?
Would it be better to edit the video and then export that from premier, then import to a composition and deshake it? The footage has audio that I need to use as well so editing it in after effects seems like a hassle.
Thanks in advance for any and all advice given. 🙂
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4 Replies
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If you go back and forth between Premiere and AE, you should use lossless compression or you’ll start geting visual artifacts that look jagged and change color. Interpret fields lower for SD-DV. AE has better raster fonts I think, plus a better deinterlacer. Lossless good outputs are TIFF, PSD, for image sequences, and animation or jpeg2000 for video. I personally use JPX, PSD or TIFF, they keep perfect, and I mean down to 3200% pixel RGB perfect encodes at 16 bpc. Targas are the safest though for multiple cpu’s and PNG’s cause gamma shifting and crashes.
AE would be hard to edit with, so I’d go with Premiere for that. If you plan on editing the whole thing finished and then deshake, you could wind up with problems tracking if you add effects, blur, or pretty much anything that de-contrasted and/or de-sharpened your footage(add temp adjustment to increase both). AE needs that badly for an accurate track which would require another export of unmodified footage to track off of anyway,
I would personally edit the rough cut in Premiere, leaving out the visual effects then de-shake and add special effects in AE or re-import back into Premiere again for final cut editing using SD-TV color management all the way.
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Thanks for responding Chris.
So you would export titles as image sequences and use those in premier? Why not use the dynamic link feature and put the composition in premier on top of the footage where the title needs to go?
So as far as deshaking goes you would rough cut footage in premier, then export it, then import the new rough cut pieces into AE and deshake, then re-import to premier to sequence it together and put transitions on it? Is that the work flow?
One question then, should I be bothering with importing compositions from AE to use on my premier time lines, or should i be exporting each composition as a video file and then putting that together in premier? If the latter, what good is the whole dynamic link thing?
Again thanks for your help, I want this project I am working on to look as professional as possible.
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You could import alpha channeled AE fonts if you like those better. Dynamic link works ok if not a bit slow. I only mentioned deshaking a rough cut because its less exporting, file size, and workload.
***”Is that the work flow?”*** Yes, at least mine. Dynamic link would be so slow laying comps in, I don’t think you’d be able to tell what you’re editing, but its your show. -
Yeah, I think I am going to finish tracking the footage, then export it and edit that rather than the comps.
So now the question, what do I put it out as? Should I just export it no compression and highest quality? Hard drive space isnt especially a problem, got a lot of free space.
Another question, what resolution and aspect should i be exporting to? The same as the settings as I am working at in the premier project? If I am making a DV NTSC 29.97fps 720×480 4:3 D1/DV NTSC (0.9) 30fps drop-frame timecode 48hz (All under my general project settings) what do I output from AE to make the end result look good? I am talking tracked video here… although I would also like to know what to output text to as well. Additionally with the text, because it will be used on top of video in premier, what other things do I need to do to get nice crisp clear text?
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