Premiere Pro H.264 clips not working in After Effects all of a sudden?

[JohnnyBhoy84]

I seem to have a new problem which started last night. I have been exporting H.264 clips from my Premiere Project to do some work on them in AE, which had been working grand untill last night. I used to do the 'replace clip with after effects comp', but I usually have multiple layers in PP, so sometimes easier just exporting everything out as a clip, and bringing it into after effects. I usually only export clips a few seconds long too, so no problems size wise.

For some reason now, certain clips just dont work in after effects, they take ages to load/preview, and even more bizarrely, I can't even access menus like file, edit ,composition etc. The only thing I thought may have been causing it was I recently downloaded some video co-pilot plugins, (FX console, Saber) but even with them deleted from my plug in folder, and trying again, the problem is still there? Also, I am fully up to date with both programs, Ae 2020 and Pr 2020 as well as media encoder.

Im I missing something obvious or is this something that other people are experiencing and could help me with?

Thank you.

[Rick Gerard]

What changed on your system? Just about anything could cause this kind of problem. 

By the way, exporting H.264 clips from Premiere Pro to use for further effects work in After Effects or any other video app is a really bad idea. I won't go into detail any more to say that you are going to exponentially increase your color artifacts, motion artifacts, and compression artifacts when you render a new video, rendering is going to take longer than it would if you used a proper frame-based format for your DI (digital intermediate), and there is not much you can do about the quality loss that isn't going to dramatically increase your render time. Spend a few bucks, buy an external hard drive to store your DI's and you'll save a bunch of time and improve the quality of your work.

[JohnnyBhoy84]

Thanks for that Rick. 

I managed to find a work around by using media encoder to render the same clip again, and it seems to work fine in after effects now. I am still trying to figure out what could be wrong overall, as previously, exports from Pr worked fine in AE.

The project I am working on presently has a lot of glitch, noise and old film/vhs overlays throughout, so I am kind of getting away with some quality loss at the moment. I will definitely do that moving forward when working on cleaner looking projects, and understand how more artifacts would increase render times.

If I may ask, as this is something I have never been too clear on, but what would you recommend format wise for exporting clips from Prem to be used in after effects, if I want to maintain maximum quality throughout?  

Cheers

[Rick Gerard]

GoPro Cineform, ProRez 422, DNxHD. They all should be available. There are lots of mezzanine codecs available.

If you are on a windows machine you might want to read this article: Mezzanine Codec Options for PC Video Editors | Safe Harbor ...

[JohnnyBhoy84]

Ah great stuff, thanks for that.

I had a quick read through the article and will study it properly later on to get a better grasp of that whole side of things.

Thanks again Rick.