2 Replies Latest reply: Nov 2, 2014 9:05 AM by Sekhar Ravinutala RSS

    What is your Premiere, After Effects and SpeedGrade Workflow?

    fabfilm Community Member

      Hi Everyone,

       

      I am an experienced editor who's switched to Adobe's CC barely a year ago. At the moment I'm in the midst of finishing up a corporate project and trying to think of the best workflow between Premiere, After Effects and SpeedGrade. I'm loving the Dynamic Link workflows, but at the some time I'm facing some obstacles, and am wondering how you guys do your work.

       

      Let's say I finished the edit of the project and send the project via Dynamic Link to SG. I finish the grade and then decide to use the Dynamic Link to AE to add some titles with shapes and effects such as Fast Blur. This is where I'm facing the first problem. When I choose a clip to be 'Replaced with an AE Composition', the color correction is gone, and now if I grade in SG, it will naturally grade the titles I added. So, it seems as though my color grade is a waste of time and I have to do it the old school way of first absolutley completing the color grade, exporting, re-importing and then heading for titles and effects. That makes you lose quite a bit of "dynamics" in your work (and time aka money), if my clients want changes for example.

       

      For simple animations with text, and shapes, this is not a big issue since you could easily add the titles to a second Video track. But when you use After Effects which changes the acutal image of a clip by adding effects, things don't work out too easily. But in any case, these might just be the limitations to the relativley new Dynamic Link workflow.

       

      In my specific example, how would you go about it? What is your workflow? Maybe I'm missing out on some tips & tricks.

       

      Be happy to hear from you guys and maybe get some expert knowledge.

       

      Best,

       

      fabian

        • 1. Re: What is your Premiere, After Effects and SpeedGrade Workflow?
          Adobetina

          Hey there,

           

          I'm also looking for a solid workflow solution since adopting (and actually really liking) Speedgrade.  So below is what I'm going to try which should work and will follow this thread to see if any other workflows pop up.  Also typing this out here to help me with plan of attack

           

          Project Specs - 3 minute corporate video with text animation, interviews, broll, and computer screen replacement

           

          • Edit in Premiere
          • Dynamic link to SpeedGrade for color correction
          • Open back up in Premiere, confirm all color corrections are applied, and then duplicate sequence to an AE Prep extension
          • In AE prep sequence, take all AE "base" shots (for computer screen composite or anything needing stabilization) up onto their own track (i.e. V5 & V6)
            • Add 10 frame handles to in & out, checkerboard clips as needed
            • Delete all other remaining content but keep blank spaces / no ripple deletes
          • Export this out to a ProRes4444 QT movie
          • Import ProRes4444 QT movie back into premiere, add over existing video layers in AE Prep extension sequence, and then there time out the screen shot replacement content to cover effect duration
          • Dynamic link AE Prep Premiere Pro sequence to AE
          • Do the AE work
          • Dynamic link back to Premiere
          • Done
            • Hopefully

           

          This was my similar work around back in the day before I had Automatic Duck in FCP to AE

           

          Hope this helps anyone else - if there are any glaring "why would you do all that" points - please let me know   I'll also report back if there are any horrible roadblocks throughout the process.

           

          _Christina

          • 2. Re: What is your Premiere, After Effects and SpeedGrade Workflow?
            Sekhar Ravinutala Community Member

            Like you, I too (and I presume most everyone) first send to SG for color correction and then (actually after another SG trip for grading) replace with AE comp for effects work. And when I try that with my CC 2014, I have the same issue (all SG effects disappear after replace with AE comp). But I believe I've found a simple workaround (at least working great so far):

            1. Instead of replace with AE comp, open AE and drag the PP comp to the AE projects - it will appear like a clip.
            2. Create an AE comp with that and do your thing.
            3. Save as AE project and import it into PP - it will appear like a clip that you can use in PP (as if you'd done a replace with AE comp).

             

            Everything will be dynamic: if you change the SG corrections, the changes will get reflected everywhere (in AE as well as the AE project imported in PP), and what you do in SG will apply BEFORE the AE stuff, which is exactly what we want. Looks like Adobe put all the capability in, but the replace with AE comp is not making use of it yet - I will report this.

             

            One other related issue is that for some weird reason, you can't drag the imported AE project in PP onto a PP sequence, BUT you can select it and ask to create a new PP sequence! Go figure.