Relationship between Premiere Pro 2 and AE7

[Jim Kunz]

Hey everyone. I'm curious as to what the standard way of handling files between Premiere Pro 2.0 and After Effects 7, and vice versa, is as I'm self-taught and professional quality will eventually become an issue.

So if you're personally putting something together in PP2, want to add some effects or whatever to specific spots using After Effects, then bring it back into PP2 - how would you go about that?

I was playing with settings in AE last night and saw that I can export as a Premiere Pro 2.0 Project. I tried this, then PP2 gave me plugin errors when I tried opening this new project and most of my effects were gone. I also tried exporting an uncompressed AVI, since I assume that is closest to the original minidv content I've captured, but no programs could play video from it, only audio.

My current method has been to export uncompressed mov files from AE, then import those back into PP2, but I have a feeling this is not how the pros do it.

Thanks in advance for any advice here.

Jim

[Nick Jushchyshyn]

I don't have/use Premiere, so I'm sorry to not be of much help for that specific integration. Like many AE users, I'm using other apps for editing.

For what it's worth, I generally render final AE comps to TIF sequences or maybe even high-quality JPG sequences if the shot is less demanding. Then bring that in as a clip in the NLE.

Good luck.

[Henry Cho]

jim,

did you purchase the adobe video collection or acquire the two applications separately? the latest avc includes the adobe dynamic link, and it can be a huge timesaver if you find yourself working in both apps a lot. basically, you can keep the two applications open, import an after effects project into premiere, and any changes made/effects added to the after effects project will be updated in premiere dynamically. if you installed the avc, you should see a new menu option in premiere's file menu called "adobe dynamic link".

importing a premiere pro project into after effects usually works out ok for me, as long as common effects and transitions are used. that said, i don't think there's anything wrong with your workflow per se. in fact, most people i know still work in the two applications separately, and i usually render out to uncompressed quicktime, or a tiff sequence if i'm going back into premiere. the level of integration that now exists between the two apps is relatively new, so i still see a lot of people using these tools together old school.

[Pete Bauer]

Jim, I probably can't help with plug-in error issue, but if you have Production Studio, you can use Dynamic Link, which is basically a live link between an AE composition and a PPro sequence, so you can avoid rendering out. It can be sloooooow, though, as both programs are running and doing updates at the same time-- but probably better than having to render a whole composition and then import it. If you have the two programs individually, rather than as part of Production Studio, then you don't have Dynamic Link and rendering out uncompressed from AE as you have done is probably about the best you'll be able to do.

On the uncompressed AVI with audio but no video...I may be missing the mark a bit because I've tried so many things over the past couple of weeks to work around what seem to be numerous Adobe Media Encoder bugs, but I had the same issue when trying to export from PPro (not AE, which I didn't try) using the "Uncompressed AVI" setting, whereas I THINK I remember that using "Microsoft AVI" and then choosing "none" for compressor did work. Try a short test.

I'm self-taught too, and I didn't have a very good teacher, so apologies if I'm not helping much.

[Henry Cho]

i would stay away from uncompressed raw avi's. they are massive and need tremendous system bandwidth to play back properly. my guess is your problems are tied to some part of your system not being fast enough to read and display the video. quicktime using the animation codec at the "best" setting is, for all intents and purposes, uncompressed and generates far more manageable files. you also gain the added bonus of an alpha channel if you need one.

[Jim Kunz]

Thanks to everyone here. I actually learned of this Adobe Dynamic Link shortly after my original post, but I figured this was some new BS as the majority of After Effects users do not use Premiere for editing. None the less, after reading up on it, I am going to get this Production Studio bundle and just have that be the route I use for now.

Lynda.com's coverage of this new relationship (found in the Premiere Pro 2.0 Essentials tutorial) states that I will be able to use every tool available in AE without having to worry if Premiere can handle it.

[Jim Kunz]

Dynamic Link is great on paper, but I am experiencing insufferable rendering times in Premiere Pro 2 any time I import and use an After Effects project in the timeline. It's usually 2-3X longer than After Effects just rendering the comp natively.. and God help you if Premiere also has things happening in the timeline with it.

Is anyone else here using Adobe Dynamic Link between After Effects 7 and Premiere Pro 2? I have an AMD 3200+ 64 and 2GB ram.. it seems that should be able to handle the dynamic link better.

[Devon Lyon]

I've been using Dynamic Link, but am still a bit more happy with just rendering out a TARGA or PNG sequence from AE 7.0, especially now that I have the Gridiron plugin for AE which utilizes both my Dual processors.