Adobe Dynamic Link?

[wøøfie]

Scenario:

I have all my videos arranged on a Premiere CC timeline exactly as I'd like them. However, I need to add After Effects CC animations (Text and shapes) over said clips / timeline.

Problem:

I need to do this without "replacing" my Premiere timeline with an After Effects comp. After Effects becomes too laggy and half the clips never fully load. I also cannot simply create the animations in After Effects and then import into Premiere because I need all of the Premiere clips for visual reference to build the animations in the first place.  I need both in After Effects Simultaneously.

Is there a way to add a live PROXY of my Premiere timeline into After Effects via Dynamic Link?  It seems my only options via Dynamic Link are to ACTUALLY import all associated clips, etc into AE.

Temp workaround:

Render out a low quality version of my Premiere timeline and import into After Effects as a single element for visual reference, build animations, import said animation comp into Premiere and drop on top of the original clips / timeline. Everything lines up, etc.

But that seems inefficient, no? Any time I need to make even a tiny adjustment to my Premiere timeline, I'll have to re-render through Premiere, re-import into After Effects, adjust animations, rinse repeat, rinse repeat.

Again, I just need a visual reference of my Premiere timeline inside After Effects that can reflect any updates I make via Premiere. Is there a better way to do this?

[Dave_LaRonde]

How do you propose to avoid the necessity of RENDERING AT SOME POINT?  What do you expect, miracles?

[Mylenium]

I have to agree with Dave. You can't avoid rendering at some point and you're dancing around the issue. DynamicLink may not be the greatest solution, but for the time being it's as good as it gets. Other than that rendering from Premiere isn't the world's end, either. I mean, 20 years ago we spent hours exporting short 3 minute clips and today you have GPU acceleration that makes it happen in faster than realtime. I really don't see why this should be any problem...

Mylenium

[Guest]

Hi danldurall,

It's possible to a take a shot from a premiere pro sequence, dynamic link to it in after effects, do some stuff with it and then dynamic link back the after effects composition in premiere where you sync the composited shot on a video track on top of your original shot.

You can still change the original shot underneath directly in premiere and the composited shot above will update automatically.

I don't think it's officially endorsed by adobe and there is a few workaround to know but it's doable.

Let me know if this is what you are looking for.

Christian

[Rick Gerard]

No... if you change the original shot in Premiere Pro, the AE comp will not update. You will have to create a new comp.

Personally, unless the shot I'm working on is very simple I only use Dynamic Link to create the new comp, then I undo the Dynamic Link in PPro to restore the original footage, work on the shot in AE and render the comp with handles (extra frames at the head and tail) and then import the rendered DI using a suitable production format back to Premiere Pro and drop it above the original shot in the Premiere timeline. I find this a much more efficient way to work than fussing with complex composites and previews in Premiere Pro when the AE comp may take up to several minutes a frame to edit.

[Guest]

Most peoples think it's impossible to do because, from what i remember, AE refuse to dynamically link to a Premiere Pro sequence, if that sequence already has a link to an AE composition. This is why i assume that this kind of Premiere => AE => Premiere "looping" is not officially endorsed by Adobe.

But here's the trick. In AE, you dynamically link to a sequence from a Premiere project saved to disk. Which means that any changes made to an opened project since the last time it was saved are not seen by AE. And if one of those changes is a dynamic link to an AE comp, AE has no way to know so it doesn't complain. This is the basic principle on how you can achieve this looping.

Here's one way to do it:

1. From your main sequence, send the shot you want to bring to AE,

   into a nested sequence and save the project.

2. Creates an AE project with an empty comp and save it.

3. Back to Premiere, link to that AE comp, bring it into the main sequence, on top of the nested one,

   but don't save those changes yet.

4. Go back to AE, link to the nested sequence and bring it into the composition.

5. That's it! Now you can save both projects.

From now on, everything will behave like any normal dynamic link but the difference is that

you can open the nested sequence and change the shot directly from Premiere.

Then you click on AE so that it catches up with the changes from Premiere,

and back to Premiere so that it catches up with the changes in AE.

I agree that this is a bit more work to put in place.

You probably don't need that much flexibility when you work with peoples that know what they want.

But real life workflows are not always a straight lines.

If anyone try this, let me know because once it's build, there's a few important things to think about.

Maybe i will try to zip and upload a demonstration.

Christian

[nicke79206043]

Hi Christian,

I've tried following your work around, but the premier sequence wont go into the AE comp - any ideas?

I'd be interested in seeing a demo.

For the life of me I don't understand why Adobe haven't got this basic process sorted.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi danldurall,

Sorry to hear of your performance issues, however the experts here gave good advice. What did you end up doing to solve your workflow issue?

Thanks,
Kevin