Hi everyone,
I’m running into a Dynamic Link issue between Premiere Pro and After Effects. In Premiere, I select a single clip in the timeline and choose “Replace with After Effects Composition.” After Effects opens, asks me to save a new .aep, creates a new composition—but the composition is empty. The selected Premiere clip does not appear inside the comp. Back in Premiere, the timeline item links to that AE comp, but since it’s empty, there’s no media.
I’ve tried to make sure I’m selecting a normal video clip (not an adjustment layer or an empty track). In some cases it might be nested or multicam. I verified the clip has real duration, tested in a fresh project where it sometimes works, cleared media caches in both apps, killed the Adobe Dynamic Link Manager process and rebooted, saved the .aep to a simple local path, disabled hardware acceleration temporarily, turned proxies off, removed effects from the clip, and confirmed that both Premiere Pro and After Effects are on the same major version under the same Adobe ID.
Environment details: OS (Windows or macOS with version), Premiere Pro version (exact build), After Effects version (exact build), footage codec/format (e.g., H.264 MP4, HEVC, ProRes, VFR/HDR), clip type (normal, multicam, or nested), and whether proxies are in use.
My questions: Are there known cases where “Replace with After Effects Composition” fails to bring the clip into the new comp, especially with nested sequences, multicam, VFR, HEVC, HDR, or proxies? What’s the recommended workaround to ensure the selected clip appears in the AE comp? If the source is nested or multicam, what’s the correct workflow to replace with AE while preserving edits? Are there any logs or preference resets specifically related to Dynamic Link that I should try beyond clearing caches?
A temporary workaround that has helped is to manually create an AE comp with the same sequence settings, import the same source file, then in Premiere go to File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition and Option/Alt-drag the comp over the clip to replace it. This works, but it’s slower than using “Replace with AE Comp.
Thanks in advance for any guidance!
2
Replies
AdChoices