Video reference not working in Au CC2018 when imported from Premiere

[Guest]

I'm having great difficulty importing my Premiere project into Audition 2018 using the 'Edit in Audition feature.' Specifically, when I send my project with the 'send through dynamic link' option for the video, everything imports correctly, except that the video file is just black. It does show a video file in the video reference track- as it should, but no image.

Oddly, this is only with my film project that is about 1:20:00.  Importing smaller projects works just fine so I can only think there is something odd going on with this specific project. I had several clips that were AE comps, but I have since replaced them with a rendered file- eliminating any links to AE.

Also, I get one error message during the import regarding an audio level exceeding 15db. I doubt this has anything to do with the video issue. I'm not getting any error message about a video issue.

Again, this file works properly in AU, regarding audio- and I can scrub through the tracks normally, but the video is black. I've got to be doing something wrong.

I'm using a PC, unless my system specs are needed, I'll spare everyone.

Thanks if anyone has an idea.

[Charles VW]

The 15 dB thing is unrelated to the video issue you're describing, but we're working on removing the need for that warning.

I've not seen the video issue you described, so it may need some investigation with the actual project.

How many sequences do you have in the project?

If you duplicate the project and remove all of the other sequences that aren't the one that is supposed to go to Audition, does that change anything?

If you manually open the *.prproj in Audition, and choose your sequence, it will come in as a video clip and not a sequence, but does the video work in that situation?

[Guest]

Thanks for the response.

I'm still having the same issue. Regarding your comments:

1.  To clarify, on my end, my film (and issue) is a specific- and long, sequence within a Pr project. It has one or two nested sequences for things like warp image stabilization. I've not encountered any issues here. As mentioned earlier, other sequences from this project that are imported into Au are working properly and I can see the video.

2. Per your suggestions, I did a Save AS and created a new project. I also got rid of any non-essential sequences in project. The result, editing in Au with dynamic link get the same black video.

3. I did try going the other way, as suggested, starting with Au and opening the Pr project and selecting a sequence, same issue/result as above.

4. Also, one other non-critical error I do get during import from Au, - I get 'effect not found for INVERT'. This is likely from doing a phase reversal of an audio channel in Pr. Again, I don't think this is related.

Now, all that said, I have had some issues that seemed random when rendering the time line in Pr. Typically, restarting the render process fixes this. Also, I did have some problematic video assets that were hanging up. I resolved this by exporting the problematic spots with Ae, creating a stable file. This seemed to work. I have been able to successfully export a rendered file mp4 from Pr via Me.

This project is a documentary film with a lot of image assets and some footage that is in different frame rates from the native project.

Most material is imported at 4K 23.97 scaled to 1080 @ 23.97 project.

Any further thoughts??  All help and suggestions greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

T

[Charles VW]

Do any of the parts of the sequence which aren't from After Effects show up properly? i.e. if you put Bars and Tone at the beginning of the sequence, does that show up?

[Guest]

Hi Charles,

No, I tried putting tone and bars with same result. I can see/hear tone on the meter, but no video- just black. Also, I tried taking my sequence and importing into a new sequence (nesting it) and still same issue.

FYI, I have removed all Ae clips that were dynamically linked and replaced with the exported rendered file. I did this early on, thinking the Ae items that were dynamically linked were the culprit.

Last, but not least, I have selected a few clips from the sequence and imported them, and that works. So, I don't know if there is something in my sequence that is corrupting the process, but I don't know how to begin to isolate the issue.

I plan to try (as a last ditch effort)  to try the export DV preview video in Pr to Au. This, I assume would take a few hours to render. (Thoughts?)

Thanks again for your continued assistance.

Best,

T

[Guest]

Quick update, I wanted to confirm that using the DV export from Pr does work correctly and I can see the video properly in Au. However, this doesn't really address what is happening in dynamic link. It does show the video can be rendered this way.

I've not used this workflow before, but I assume that taking my mix back to Pr (likely importing as stems) should work correctly. The unfortunate part of this is the added render time required to do the DV export, an overnight operation.

I'd still really like to get to the bottom of this to determine if this is something corrupted on my end, or a potential bug.

Many thanks,

T

[Charles VW]

DV is an unfortunate format decision from several years ago which just hasn't been updated (long story).  If you're sending a rendered video, it may be better to render H.264 and send that to Audition. That way, you can have better picture quality and not be forced to a DV frame size and frame rate.

Thanks for all of the followups, I think we would need a copy of your *.prproj (without the media) to investigate in-house.  It would also be helpful to have the exact version numbers and the paths of Premiere Pro, Audition, and After Effects.  You can email all of those to audbugs@adobe.com and reference this forum thread.

[Guest]

Ok, I will try in the next day to get this to you.

As far as pushing forward, the DV resolution does not represent a big issue as the audio mix is the critical component. However, what I do want to ensure is that stem mixes import back via dynamic link to the Pr project. Thus, as I understand it, if additional editing is required, mixed stems can edited with video without a major redo- in simple situations.

I do want to get this working correctly, as you indicated, it's not the intended work flow between Pr and Au.

Thanks,

T

[Charles VW]

Sending stems from Audition to Pr isn't through DynamicLink. It creates individual *.wav files for each stem, and packages those into a modified FCP XML file which is sent to Premiere with an indicator that the XML came from Audition so Premiere will show the appropriate dialog to allow you to append to a sequence or replace tracks.

It should be noted that there are some bugs found after release of Audition CC 2018 related to mix down. Depending on your effects usage, this may or may not affect you. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch, or using CC 2017.1.1 of Audition should be fine for just the mix down part.