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.

[Jim_Simon]

You understand this is just a user forum, not official Adobe support?

There's nothing wrong with getting your rant on from time to time, but to make sure things get fixed, the official Bug Report is your best option.

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[Janne Laiho]

Actually I do think this is my best option to get things fixed, albeit not a very good option either. A serious issue persists, and many people have reported it for some considerable time. Companies do monitor their own forums, which is why I posted.

Thanks for your advice nevertheless.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Janne,

Actually I do think this is my best option to get things fixed, albeit not a very good option either.

Actually, Jim is correct. The best way for us to take any action is to file a bug report or feature request.

A serious issue persists, and many people have reported it for some considerable time.

In most cases, troubleshooting can fix dynamic link issues. In most cases it has to do with versions not matching. I have no problems with it when I am running expected versions for dynamic link. Have you verified that you have compatible versions of the application? What exactly is not working as it's fine here?

Companies do monitor their own forums, which is why I posted.

In our case, only the employees in the support realm are monitoring the forums. The people that design the application typically do not monitor the forums. It's up to us to pass along any verifiable issues and to encourage the filing of bug reports. The problem is that we cannot get to every conversation posted by every customer, so you do need to file that bug to be sure.

If you give us more details about your system, media, and versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects, I hope we can help you better with your current problem. 

Thanks,

Kevin

[WebOfWebs]

Actually Janne is correct.

Most companies (and i work in software support) *do* pay attention to their own forums, and have the professionalism to deal with whatever issues the interwebs are talking about.

It is a shame that Adobe, like Microsoft and a few others, spend so much time sensoring angry users instead of dealing with their issues.

This results in non-offical forums becoming *the* place to go for help, support, and solutions.

Personally i've frequent other forums 99% of the time because they provide answers and help instead of asking for bug reports.

I suspect you, yourself, have commented that a users problem is not a bug but rather misuse, misunderstanding, or simply not reading the manual. Only the very experienced and knowledgable will know the difference.

Tell  me: the fact that Dynamic Link has no reliable undo, or 'return to original clip because the *replaced* clip has been lost/corrupted' - is this a bug, or a design flaw/requested feature?

(i can guess: "it's by design")

[Jim_Simon]

the fact that Dynamic Link has no reliable undo, or 'return to original clip because the *replaced* clip has been lost/corrupted' - is this a bug, or a design flaw/requested feature?

That is a much needed Feature Request.

[davidarbor]

Janne, I'm not saying Dynamic Link is flawless, it's not, but often times when people have troubles with it there are issues with the local machine. For starters, do your versions of Ae and Pr match, in terms of release date? If not, then you're not going to get anywhere with DL, so the first thing is to make sure you're running the latest version of both, or at least versions that were released at the same time. Sometimes there are cache issues, and other times old installs can cause the problem. So you have a valid complaint, but you provided no information to help diagnose the issue.

To say "the vast majority of features in CC are of little or no use" is a ridiculous statement. The user base of these programs goes far and wide beyond the kind of work any of us do on their own. Sometimes features are released that I would never use, but that doesn't make them useless. The number of CC features and enhancements that have been released post-CS6 that have greatly improved my workflow far outweigh the ones that haven't.

And yes, lots of people post about DL issues, but they're not all the same one, so to say that it doesn't work is a generalization. I would love to see it faster and improved too, which is why I submit feature requests. If you file a bug there's a good chance the devs will get back to you. If you can provide them with a project file then there's an even better chance they can help you.

But for starters, what versions are you running of Premiere, After Effects, and Media Encoder? Do you have concurrent CC installs, and if so, are you sure that you're not accidentally working in mismatching versions when you send something to AME or have something like DL automatically open up Ae, because this can sometimes be a problem.

[WebOfWebs]

This is a peculiar excuse!

Dont most of your customers rely on you to provide matching versions? Isnt it via your software that we get notifications about updates?

Are you saying that everytime Adobe's Cloud says there's some update, we have to search the interwebs for news about version matching????

Personally i use Adobe *because* of DL - i sooooo want it to work smoothly.

But just this month there's been an AE update that seriously altered the rendering processes, causing lots of headaches in PPro... and when i was informed about the update, via Adobe, you didnt say "oh, make sure PPro is version x.x.x.x and not..."

So NO, i do not accept this excuse.

[Jim_Simon]

Dont most of your customers rely on you to provide matching versions?

Adobe does.  But that doesn't mean every customer is doing things correctly and using the properly matched versions.

[Jim_Simon]

Are you saying that everytime Adobe's Cloud says there's some update, we have to search the interwebs for news about version matching????

I don't believe that's necessary in every case, but if one is having any problems with Dynamic Link, then it's not a bad idea to check the version numbers you're using to verify.

[Jim_Simon]

But just this month there's been an AE update

What version number was that?  I've seen nothing yet about the next release.  Are you in the Prerelease program?

[davidarbor]

This month's update was just one of the ones that either updated Camera Raw or the Digital Publishing Suite. Usually when you see After Effects, Photoshop, and InDesign updates and not the other apps in the same family, it's going to be one of those.

And @WebofWebs, no you shouldn't have to go searching for info about version matching, the CC app should be letting you know about all updates within 24ish hours of them being posted. A lot of times Dynamic Link issues are being caused by some external factor that is specific to the users' machine, whether it's preferences, caches, or mismatched versions. I've had my fair share of issues, and sometimes, as much as it sucks, the easiest thing to do is uninstall the apps, run the cleaner tool, and reinstall.

[Jim_Simon]

This month's update was just one of the ones that either updated Camera Raw

That one I got.  It doesn't change the rendering process, though.

[javierCarranza]

Thank you davidarbor!

As soon as I read your comment I realized my issue with DL: I have updated Premiere but not AE.

After the update it all worked as it should.

All the best

Javier

[Stu Mannion]

I have the exact same problem, it's been around for years and it's annoying.

If I use AME to export a seq from PP it renders it with the old versions of the embedded AFX comps. If I export the export the exact same thing directly from PP without use AME, then it exports perfectly.

I am using the latest versions of all apps at this time (31 May 2016)

Please fix this Adobe!

[WebOfWebs]

Oh My God! I can not believe some of the suggestions here.

I work in a large company. I have to make sure workstations are working. None of us have time to spend uninstalling, cleaning, and reinstalling poorly written programs that have not been properly tested before release...

Just for fun I'll tell you my secret - imaging.

I build up a great machine, install lots of programs, configure it, TEST IT, etc.

And then image the bug-er (oops, i think someone in Texas doesnt like that word!)

This allows me to *quickly* get the software back on its feet when it faceplants.

Also, we do not give unlimited internet access (so no updates of any kind). those are done centrally.

You see how ridiculous its becoming: perpetual licenses, no 'on-hand' old versions, rolling updates, offense taken at non-local english (my aussie colleagues cant post here at all) ... clearly greed is overtaking progress. but good news: Fusion is free (limited features, not limited time).

[thedrummer · Accepted solution]

Adobe File management seems to rely on names and last known file path. PPro loses dynamic link (and other files) files with frightening regularity in a situations where nothing has changed in the file hierarchy.

16 years ago, when an 8 gb hard drive was a huge drive, Pro Tools was strewing files across multiple drives because, since it was creating audio files in real time, it had to. Digidesign brought in a system that embedded a unique program generated number in every file. Since that day I have never had an issue with lost or unlinkable files. I can move them anywhere, onto any system and any given PT session finds them with complete reliability - and we are talking many projects each with thousands of files, across multiple studios. If you are searching for files you can choose to use the ID number, the file name, the file duration, or any combination of these. That allows for file substitution.

  Until Adobe attack this problem with a solution similar to that of Pro Tools, we will be constantly beset by problems.

[Janne Laiho]

To conclude this discussion from my part:

- I've filed a bug report, nothing has happened

- just for the sake of being able to tell you here: I did uninstall all CC apps, run the cleaner tool and reinstalled the apps - the problem persists

- I don't have concurrent installs of CC apps, and all CC apps are the latest versions

- this problem has persisted for a number of years on a number of systems for a number of users, it is not specific to me or my current setup (I've experienced this problem on three different systems of mine over the years)

Rather than starting to list the various details of one of my systems, which will not help anybody or anything (also I'm informed above that this is not a technical support forum), I will do the one and only thing that will help with the problem: that is to clean AME, PPro and AE caches, restart the apps, render, and after rendering check each render very carefully. Sometimes I will just render files from AE and edit in the traditional way.

Adobe did in fact listen as Kevin has kindly responded. As thedrummer points out above, the fault is with the software - not the users or their systems. I for one hope that a solution to put this all to an end will someday emerge. CC - even with all of these problems - is the best alternative for somebody like myself who do everything from cinematography to motion graphics and animation to sound design.

Looking forward to the issues being solved one day. Bye for now.

[SquareEyz]

I'm with Janne Laiho and  thedrummer​ on this, 100%

The facility I work at has utilized dynamic linking for some of our Lower thirds and packaging templates, with no functional issues since live text was introduced. We don't tend to use dynamic links extensively other than that, and I tend to finalize items with a 'render and replace' or final render from AE of all dynamic comps, cut in manually- so it's primarily for iterations until approvals.

However, the latest cc2015.3 releases of PP and AE have broken dynamic link projects that utilize expressions, for me and others.

Caution updating Premiere Pro CC 2015.3! « ANIMOTION 

This thread is the only "current" post on the subject I can find- which is quite surprising to me.

Here is a post I made last week

Re: Enhanced Editable Text within Premiere

and pseudo related one I found from June 13

Premiere Pro / After Effects Editable Text / Highlight Color

[Kevin-Monahan]

Dear SquareEyz,

The facility I work at has utilized dynamic linking for some of our Lower thirds and packaging templates, with no functional issues since live text was introduced. We don't tend to use dynamic links extensively other than that, and I tend to finalize items with a 'render and replace' or final render from AE of all dynamic comps, cut in manually- so it's primarily for iterations until approvals.

I do understand your frustration.

Those customers are having entirely different issues than you are. In fact, dynamic link works great for almost everyone. When things do go wrong, it is usually because of security software, changes in QuickTime, updating software mid-project, not clearing cache, corrupt preferences, or other core issue not precisely related to the software.

Your issue, if I am not mistaken, is with a known bug with Live Text Templates, especially those that contain expressions. We are working on a fix that we hope to release shortly. Until then, if you are reliant upon using Live Text Templates for your workflow, you can install the previous versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects until that update is released. I hope that this will work in the short term.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Kevin

[SquareEyz]

Thank you Kevin for the prompt response

updating software mid-project is a tricky issue for us, as we are a broadcast and web studio, with 15 years worth of shows behind us, and more rolling out constantly. So we are always mid-project 😕

We tend to wait a bit to hear of any major issues people are experiencing.
But that information seems difficult to ascertain without a lot of expenditure of time searching. I wonder if there could be a forum specific to recent releases, that staff and users could assist each other identifying the biggest issues? Or maybe there is already and I have not found it in amongst the rats nest of CS6 posts

Anyone else?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Dear SquareEyz,

updating software mid-project is a tricky issue for us, as we are a broadcast and web studio, with 15 years worth of shows behind us, and more rolling out constantly. So we are always mid-project 😕

That is a great case best case for better project updating in Premiere Pro. Teams like yours should not have to worry about such things.

Please let the product team know about your situation here.

We tend to wait a bit to hear of any major issues people are experiencing.

But that information seems difficult to ascertain without a lot of expenditure of time searching. I wonder if there could be a forum specific to recent releases, that staff and users could assist each other identifying the biggest issues?

We're doing that here, but you're correct, we do not have a "known issues/bug fixes" doc out yet. I will alert the product team about this issue. My apologies.

Stand by for the update. I will see if the fix will be included and will let you know, if I can.

Thank you,
Kevin

[SquareEyz]

Thank you Kevin! I know you are just doing your Job here, and doing the best with what you've got

I will contact the Product team, thanks for your link.

Best,

D

[bododge]

I am just chiming in to say that I have had nothing but problems with DL comps in Premiere. My machine is running same versions of everything. The problem is far greater reaching than just the "dynamic text" templates. Any type of DL comp has had the exact same problems for me. (habitually unlinking, failing to send to AME, sending wrong versions etc. I have talked to a lot of editors who are on completely different machines, they all have the same problems at home and work too.

Now read carefully because I am the only one offering a real solution. The solution in almost every case is to either recreate the comp completely (copy paste the contents to a new comp), or delete the cache and export directly from premiere (skipping AME) one by one. Outside of these two options, you best bet is to pre-render your .mov in AE and then make a traditional edit in Premiere.

...And shame on whoever for giving us marketing rhetoric "dynamic link works great for almost everyone".....UHHHHH HUHHH. Great Thanks..

[Sydlys]

Hi guys,

I was reading most of your posts and answers but I didn't saw if someone wrote about problem we have.

Sorry if I missed out!

We are working with PC.

All AE compositions inserted in Premiere are not working! There is no offline message or so. Slider just stuck

on that section of timeline. I have find out that I must right-click on the AE composition and choose "Edit original"

to open AE project and than Premiere renders out preview. Than he stuck on a next one and I must repeat procedure

with that one again!

Restarting PC does the trick but problem is coming back after a while.

It is annoying, don't you say!?