Rename Dynamic Link Missing Link?

[BartonGarrett256]

I am Charlie Brown, Dynamic Link is the football.  Adobe, sadly, is Lucy. It’s a common theme.

It has such potential, to avoid all that rendering and to zip back and forth like a flying car over Bay Area traffic. Sigh.

But alas, in practice I get crashes, hang ups and the software equal of a catatonic stare. And just often enough to keep me trying, glimpses of the joy of renderless back and forth. 

I am on cc, a PC with plenty of horsepower and everything is current.  Ae, Pr, Ps, the usual stuff.  Short comps.   I’m not looking for troubleshooting, just wondering if anyone has seen a Koolaide free assessment of what works and what doesn’t. You know--don’t even think about that, but you can do this and this. 

[Szalam]

BartonGarrett256  wrote

I am Charlie Brown, Dynamic Link is the football.  Adobe, sadly, is Lucy.

Amazing.

BartonGarrett256  wrote

But alas, in practice I get crashes, hang ups and the software equal of a catatonic stare. And just often enough to keep me trying, glimpses of the joy of renderless back and forth. 

What sort of workflow are you aiming for? I mean, are you using AE for motion graphics? Are you editing a feature film and using AE for visual effects? Or something else?

[BartonGarrett256]

Thanks for the reply.   I work mostly in Ae and Ps, and usually finish and export in Pr.  To pay the bills I do corporate work- marketing stuff, product, interviews technical and scientific stuff for  biotech and technology companies.   I am an engineer who got tired of corporate life.  I am working on docs on my own dime. In Ae I  do  graphics, and stuff with stills, titles, time lapses, just general stuff.

Typically I try to use Dynamic Link to go from Ae to Pr, I might find a mask needs tweaking, or I want to add more layers, lots of back and forth that would be painful without it.  Never from Pr to Ae.

Yesterday I did a 4K title in Ae using Type Monkey.   Pr wanted no part of that, hang-up, crash, Task Manager to quit kinda stuff.  I was trying to figure out if it was Type Monkey or 4K and looked around, I could find  no comprehensive "this will",  "this won't" kind of list. Is it file size, precomps, plug-ins, layers...  Lynda.com was pushing sunshine and unicorns, I was getting manure and rain.

[Mylenium]

It will never work as you seem to want it to work. That old issue of cyclic links across apps. And not to spoil the party, but IMO DynamicLink was ill-conceived from the start and clearly it doesn't help trying to fix the bugs in it while also re-architecting the main apps it is supposed to handle. That's open heart surgery to the power of ten... So rather than hoping that Adobe will somehow ever get a handle on it, I would simply look elsewhere...

Mylenium

[Dave_LaRonde]

BartonGarrett256  wrote

... in practice I get crashes, hang ups and the software equal of a catatonic stare. And just often enough to keep me trying, glimpses of the joy of renderless back and forth.

I agree with Mylenium -- trying to use Dynamic link to round-trip from PP to AE and back to PP is a VERY BAD IDEA.  It just doesn't work as advertised.

The Adobe Marketing Weasels make it sound great.  But the Nike Marketing Weasels made it sound like a pair of Air Jordans would let you play like Michael.  Adobe and Nike are different products, but a Marketing Weasel is a Marketing Weasel.

I use DL only for one-way trips from PP to AE.  I'll organize the PP timelines to meet the demands of the project, make double-dog sure it's right, then import it into AE.  I select only the timelines that are germaine to the AE work.  After I do my AE voodoo, I render out my comps & import them into PP.

I never, EVER have any problems.

Sure, it may take longer, but I'm willing to bet it's a lot less time than trying to troubleshoot a PP-AE round-trip that's gone south!

[BartonGarrett256]

Thanks for the replies!  My work always seems to have a lot of back and forth, and not having to render is so nice, no revision control, no long renders, smaller files.  When it works it is a great time saver.   I guess I just need to be realistic, I will try and start to make a list of what does and does not work. I suspect somebody knows what will and won't work.  From my time in product development at least the testing guys always know what is going to happen, sometimes they get voted down...

I live close to San Jose and go to Ps User Group meetings at headquarters, and twice have got to play with new things they are working on,  every Adobe person I have had the pleasure to meet has been  very nice.  Sometimes they drive me crazy, but they do care about the product and us users.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

DL does break and sadly too often. You have to find a nice fence to sit on, with DL, to see how it balances with you and your machine. I sorta know when DL will fail on my machine - sorta like building a wall because it's stronger than a fence. In short, brew your own beer at home, have a party and invite only well-behaved, respectable friends over. 😉