Issues with dynamic link between Premiere Pro and After Effects

[Janne Laiho]

Hello,

dynamic linking (inserting After Effects compositions on Premiere Pro timelines) has very seldom worked as it should ever since it was introduced. Problems vary (e.g. "media offline" plates rendered, old versions of comps rendered).

What's the worst is that one can never tell what will eventually be rendered out of Premiere Pro. So, a typical professional workflow of putting several projects together for finishing during the day and batch rendering over night can result in a catastrophe.

Of course, the option is to not use dynamic link. Which makes the whole adobe suite less than competitive.

This topic has been discussed extensively during the years dynamic link has existed. I am not the only one with this problem, and the problem is far from new.

My only question is:

Adobe: will you ever fix dynamic link?

I don't really understand how you prioritise software development in your company. The vast majority of features in CC are of little or no use. The most important thing in a professional environment is consistent, reliable performance - can you please focus on that?

I'm inspired to write this post as I just arrived in my edit at 7 a.m. only to notice that my overnight renders are the wrong versions. Everything plays back fine in PPro and AE, too bad the final render out of Media Encoder used some old version of one of my comps, and that I have nothing to send to my client.

Janne

Title edited by Kevin Monahan.

[ThaiBear]

Uninstalled, reinstalled, checked the correct versions. 

A year later (just for me) and I still run into this.  It is maddening.  Same locations, same files the only thing that changes is with the adobe updates, then, your project doesn't work... then I loose work.  I just lost a bid to update my old work as I have been trying to get this software to work. 

If anyone has had success with other brands of software that are similar in function and price to AE and PP, please let me know. 

User since pagemaker 6 and photoshop since early 1990.  Quality Standards are changing.

bear

[Jim_Simon]

If anyone has had success with other brands of software that are similar in function and price to AE and PP, please let me know. 

I'm in the process of switching to Resolve 14.  It's still in beta, but very promising, offering many niceties that PP lacks.

Fusion 9 was just released yesterday also.

Both are now available for free, as well as $299/ea for the full Studio versions.

[Janne Laiho]

Hello,

back again. With the same project that originally inspired me to write. My customer wants multiple language versions of several different videos, each with several text elements and other content that would greatly benefit from dynamic linking that worked - altogether dozens of dynamically linked AE compositions on several PPro timelines.

Since my original post, new versions of AE and PPro have emerged. Also, an update to OS X has been rolled out. I updated everything.

Now...I open the project from some time ago, and:

- some dynamically linked AE content is gibberish (letters are missing, some are of some exotic language I don't recognize)

- some dynamically linked AE content is 1) not visible in the PPro preview (the clip can still be seen on the timeline) and 2) when clicking "edit original", opens the wrong composition

- no changes in AE comps are reflected in PPro (as was the case before)

- some compositions open with no content (nothing in the AE preview window, while items are on AE timeline)

...or to summarize: the project is a useless, total and complete mess.

I sold the language versions to my client a while ago and now it's time for me to deliver, as I've received translations. Except my project doesn't work any more.

Why am I writing this here? Because: for people following this thread, do not under any circumstances rely on dynamically linking anything for any professional work. You might get what you're supposed to, or not. You might render what you see, or not.

In short: dynamic link is not suitable for professional work.

Please don't tell me that "many people have no issues". I have issues. Many people I know have issues with dynamic link. Some may not have issues, but many do. It doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

[David Arbor]

Hi Janne,

In short, that sucks. Nothing more to say about it.

Since DL working would make your project more successful, I'd recommend removing your Ae comps from the Project panel and reimporting them and adding them to your timeline. That's going to give you the highest change of things working.

If you think the problem is with your AEP then perhaps you can try importing it into a clean Pr project to see if you get a successful Dynamic Link. If that works then it's probably worth re-importing them into your working project. You can also try clearing your media cache, which I know you've already done, but since you mentioned garbled text, that's usually the first thing to check out.

[Janne Laiho]

Hi,

take a guess if this issue has been resolved (pun intended).

Bye,

Janne

[Kevin-Monahan]

HI Janne,
Sorry. Did you check the versions? That is almost always the issue. Which ones are you running? Hope we can help.

Thanks,
Kevin