Render and Replace with AE Clips

[Nadine_onlea]

I'm working on a series of 10-16 minute videos: two cams and a bunch of dynamically linked AE Comps are running on top. The footage is located on an SSD while the AE and other image files are on Google Drive. Not surprisingly, I've been having some issues with exporting these. They get hung up somewhere in the encoding, I think.

As a workaround, I tried "render and replace" on the AE clips and it worked beautifully for exporting the projects, performance-wise.

Here's the problem: all the backgrounds in the project are white, all the AE have white comp backgrounds and the PP timeline has a white matte layer as the base. But when I export these, every comp dips to black at the start.

When I remove the "render and replace" or "restore unrendered" these clips, and re-export that section (because I can't export the entire thing without render and replace) the black dips at the start of the AE clips are gone.

What I've tried:

Removing the handles from the clips I "render and replace" - didn't work.

I've tried both Quicktime and DNxHR for the render and replace format.

I added a white solid layer to the bottom of each AE COMP, in addition to seeing the background comp color to white.

Does anyone have any ideas that I might try?

[Jeff Bellune]

Export a comp or two from inside Ae and view them in a media player and then in the source monitor in Pr after importing them. Is anything seen that could relate to the dip to black?

Download the Ae stuff and other images from Google drive and put them on your SSD. Your dynamic link export performance should improve dramatically.

[Nadine_onlea]

Nope, no black at all. I'm not sure what to think. There is no black in any of these AE comps or in the PP background,

[Jeff Bellune]

I assume your Pr sequence is busy with lots of stuff going on around the Ae comps? And that things have been moved around a bit?

Since the DL export when run "live" has not dip to black problem, and the export using the rendered and replaced clips does, it's likely there's a cache problem. I recommend  saving and closing your Pr project, quitting Pr completely, and restarting it from a shortcut. When you get tot the welcome screen and before opening any projects, delete *all* your media cache files. Close Pr and relaunch to see if the local version exports more like the linked version.

[Nadine_onlea]

That makes sense.

I'll give this a try. I have deleted the media cache to try to resolve this issue and relocated it to an SSD earlier. 

[Carlos Ziade]

Adding to what Jeff suggested, make sure both After Effects and Premiere Pro

are using the same project settings - renderers and same sequence, composition settings.

[Nadine_onlea]

Excellent suggestion and the first thing I tried. This was shot in a controlled setting, and all the footage is the same. Setting matches the footage, just scaled back from 4k to HD (50% scale in effects control).

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi slashgraphics,

Sorry! What happens if you move all the assets off Google Drive and onto a folder on your hard drive? I've had trouble over the years with iCloud, etc., I hope that helps. Let me know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Nadine_onlea]

I had the same thought! I did try this! I have tried a couple of things to isolate the issue. So when I built one with everything only on my desktop (except the source footage, which is on an SSD) it still hung up on export, specifically at the encoding stage. I moved everything for that one off the drive and only worked from my desktop.

[Nadine_onlea]

They are, my creative director had me check that right off the top. 

[Nadine_onlea]

They are, my creative director had me check that right off the top. 

[Richard van den Boogaard]

Another thing you may need to check: are the AE files updated to the latest version? Sometimes re-opening the AE comps in AE and re-saving them makes all the difference!

Hope this helps.