Premiere Pro/After Effects/Audition workflow question

[dazzathedrummer]

Hi,

I've recently upgraded to 'All Apps' and I currently have a small film project that I'm working on in Premiere.

I'm predominantly a music producer with an advanced knowledge of DAW software - I've dabbled with films using iMovie/Final Cut and have found Premiere Pro really intuitive and simple to use.

I'm at the start of the film project and have my footage divided into sub-clips - my next move is to document the clips and form a storyboard.

In the mean time I'd like to put out some short teaser clips based on the footage (to share on a facebook page related to the content).

I'd like the clip to start with some video static (which I have at the end of the footage as it was originally on VHS) - then I'd like to fade up some text, I then want to fade the text to black, put up a graphic  (which I have in Illustrator) and have some audio from the footage playing along to the end - the whole thing will be around 30secs.

My question is about workflow and choice of apps - to me, it seems that I should base this in AE as I can use that to create the text - with the audio... should I process the sound in Audition and export a .wav file into the AE project, or import the video clip that contains the audio and process the audio in AE? (the dialogue needs some treatment).

With so many pieces of software available, I'm a bit unsure which way to go?!?!?

[Rick Gerard]

Audition is for polishing audio and it is also very good at doing a final mix for video edited in Adobe Premiere.

Adobe Premiere is an excellent non-linear editing app perfectly suited to editing movies. It also has a fairly robust audio mixer with some excellent tools. I do the initial sound mix in Premiere Pro for most projects, then put the final polish in Audition using the Edit In Audition feature you find in Premiere Pro. This uses Dynamic Link to open up an Audition project in the right workspace for mixing sound for video.

Premiere Pro also has fairly robust effects and titling capabilities. After Effects should be used to create shots and short sequences that you cannot produce in Premiere Pro. The dynamic link feature in Premiere Pro does not bring text or most effects into After Effects for further editing. If you create an After Effects composition from selection in a Premiere Pro timeline you basically just get trimmed copies of your edited shots in an After Effects composition.

After Effects is NOT an editing app. It is designed for creating visual effects and motion graphics that you cannot create in an NLE like Premiere Pro. If you are doing a lot of text to audio it is usually a very good practice to limit the length of each composition to a single phrase, sentence. Comps longer than a paragraph quickly become unwieldy and difficult to manage. It is a very easy task to render those compositions to a good production format and to the final edit in Premiere Pro. You can even combine multiple comps into a master comp and so some editing in After Effects. The biggest mistake new AE users make is trying to do everything in composition and trying to effects using one or two layers. 90% of my compositions are one shot under seven seconds. I did a 25 frame composition the other day that had 4 nested compositions and a total of about 40 layers because that is what it took to composite a believable lightning strike into a moving camera shot of a cowboy riding a horse through the mountains. The total length of the shot was almost 8 seconds, but the lightning strike effect only took 25 frames. I hope you followed that.

There is one more thing that you should know about using Dynamic Link to bring shots into AE from Premiere. If the shot or short sequence of shots you bring into After Effects have complicated effects and are going to take a long time to render your best option is to bring the shot into AE, then immediately go back to Premiere and undo the last action to put the original footage back in the sequence. You then complete the composite or motion graphic in After Effects, render to a suitable production format using AE's render cue, then replace the shot in Premiere Pro. Very complex compositions can bog down the background rendering required to use Dynamic Link and cause huge production slowdowns in Premiere. The can also cause render failures, so if the shot is complex, render it and cut it into the final film in PPro.

After Effects also has the ability to import a Premiere Pro sequence. This is only a good idea if your Premiere Pro sequence is Cuts Only, contains no nested sequences, and has no effects or transitions. I have only used this feature on rare occasions where I needed to quickly show something to a client or prepare s sequence of shots for some other pre-production process. I cannot think of a single time that I have used the Import a Premiere Pro sequence for final production of a film project that was longer than 10 or 15 seconds.

I hope this gives you some useful suggestions. After Effects is a very powerful production tool, and all of this bouncing back and forth between apps sounds like more work than you need to go through to produce a video, but if your project is properly organized and planned you'll get a better job done in less time if you always use the right tools for the job. Trying to do it all in one app is only a good idea for a very simple project.

[Letty2019]

Wow, you really know your stuff.

Question:

You mentioned you can only import "cuts only" from PPRO into AE.

I have to import and entire feature (4:3) that is already cut in PPRO, and bring it into AE to make use of AE's Detail Preserving Upscale effect...

Any tips?

Cuts only,  means I'll have to strip down each sequence in the PPRO timeline, move them into AE, do the effect, then re add any effects back to the clips in the PPRO timeline....

OH GOD!

What a great deal of work.

I hope you know some magic that can help me.

Thanks!

Letty

or maybe there is a way to import the entire finished film in one large file, into AE and do the upscale for the entire film all at once? (the film is old school DV, and I have 32gb of ram and 8 cores, on standby)

[Rick Gerard]

Letty2019  wrote

I have to import and entire feature (4:3) that is already cut in PPRO, and bring it into AE to make use of AE's Detail Preserving Upscale effect...

Any tips?

The first thing I would try is creating a new sequence in Premiere Pro that is the size of your final render. Then just drag the edited sequence inside that sequence and tell Premiere Pro to scale it up to fit the frame. Premiere Pro does a very good job of scaling up and it is a lot better than the basic scale function in After Effects.

If you still want to use Detail Preserving Upscale and the edit is complicated or longer than a couple of minutes I would seriously consider rendering a suitable digital intermediate using a. visually lossless frame-based production format like ProRez or DNxHD or even a 10-bit Gopro Cineform format and then using After Effects to scale up that single shot. None of the PPro transitions and only a few of any of the PPro effects in your sequence will transfer into After Effects and you could easily end up with an unstable Comp with hundreds of layers and missing effects. AE was never intended to process an entire movie that was edited in Premiere Pro. AE is designed to work on motion graphics and visual effects in a single shot or short sequence. That is what it is good at.

If you use a visually lossless, intraframe format there will be absolutely no quality loss and the end result will be indistinguishable from a project where you spend days or weeks modifying an edit in Premiere Pro so that it would successfully import directly into AE. You may hear other voices tell you that you are loosing if you render, but it is not and it never was true. The only time you lose quality is if you use lossy (jpeg, mp4, MPEG) formats for digital intermediates. Even if your original footage is 32-bit log or RAW, there is a visually lossless format you can use as a DI.

[Letty2019]

Oh my.  I took me 30 mins just to analyze everything you wrote and try to understand it.

Yes, the project is about 2 hours long, and I would like the best upscale possible, which from what I researched is AE's Detail Preserve UpScale.  PPro upscale isn't as clean as AE from the test result videos I've seen.

So if I understand right, you mentioned in order to obtain the goal of using AE Upscale, I need to:

(Your quote:)   "consider rendering a suitable digital intermediate using a. visually lossless frame-based production format like ProRez or DNxHD or even a 10-bit Gopro Cineform format and then using After Effects to scale up that single shot."

I don't understand that because you state "then using AE to scale up that single shot"   

What single shot?  Just one clip in the thousands I have on file?  OR does the software you mentioned process the entire film into one file and I import that file into AE, process the scale, then send back to PPro for export?

I hope my question makes sense, because I don't fully understand the process. All I know is I have this film that needs to be upscaled in AE.

Is your work flow mentioned in your reply go as follows:

PPRo editing -> ProRez processing -> AE upscale processing -> PPro then sends to Media Encoder -> then burn to disk?

Thanks Rick for clearing this up and sending me in the right direction.  I'm having a very difficult time researching this.  I've read dozens and dozens of posts, and it seems everybody has their own take.  I can tell you are a Master at this, so I will follow your lead.

Thanks for your help,

Letty

Oh, what about RedGiant's "Shooter Instant 4K" that got rave reviews for high quality upscale from DV all the way to 4K.  It's a plugin that will work in PPro.  Maybe that is my solution?  I found it here https://www.redgiant.com/products/shooter-instant-4k/

Looks promising.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

If you are going the PPro-to-AE route, I suggest you nest the PPro sequence. You'll then get one long clip in the nested sequence. Cut this up to bite sizes - propably15 or 20 minute segments. Then copy each and paste into AE. Then render one segment for test purposes. If all goes well, render them as  a batch render to best fit your workflow. Sense make?

[Letty2019]

Thanks but it sounds messy, caz when I bring the sequences back into PPro, I have to re-edit in all the effects to the clips, dissolves, etc... very time consuming, and if I want to make future changes, even messier because all the sequences are locked in and hard to single out stuff.  (If I understand you correctly)

I think using a plugin like Red Giant that works in PPro, it will upscale the footage and I have complete control over all the clips and effects, with no future re-editing of effects needed. (remember AE only takes straight edit cuts, does not recognize pre edited effects from PPro)

Thanks again for the thought.

I'm waiting to hear back from Rick to see what he thinks on this.

[foughtthelaw]

Rick gave a much more though answer, but I do see anything in the list of things you're trying to do that would require you to need After Effects at all. In fact, overall, your life will probably be much simpler and you'll be able to work faster in Premiere whole doing your audio finishing in Audition.