Add the ability to keyframe an imported After Effects MOGRT

[aTomician]

It would be extremely useful to be able to keyframe the controls in Premiere Pro for a MOGRT (Motion Graphic Template) created in After FX. I create a template in AFX, add it to CC libraries, I can import this into Premiere and adjust the controls, but I can't keyframe them. This would take the power of MOGRT's to a whole new level.

I have extensively documented the process I'm trying to do here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/255599

[thingswelike]

I find this strange that it's not in already. In Effects Controls there is Graphic Parameters. I was expecting to just find stopwatches throughout. Finding this thread is a disappointment

[defaulta8jwmbem1sz8]

Hello Adobe! Any news on this? In was posted in 2018!!

[Paul Starsky]

Just wanted to bump this back up. This would be an amazing addition.

[12 Point Productions]

YES, PLEASE! I use slider controls all the time and I have to go into After Effects each time I want to change a value in the graphic I am making. It is such a pain. It would be absolutely fantastic to be able to keyframe properties of a mogrt in Premiere.

[Levi24046785x5qw]

Yet another comment to bring this thread back to the top.

I'm experimenting with a complex, adaptive Ae -> Pr essential graphics template for the first time and I am quickly realizing this is impossible without the ability to import the keyframes from Ae to Pr, or the ability to add keyframes to the template in Pr.

Essential graphics is so close to being a truly amazing and powerful tool, adding keyframe features is a small feature that would greatly increase Essential Graphics utility.

*Edit*
What I am thinking of is this: Currently, you can make a EG template from scratch in Pr, set keyframes, set the intro/outro animation segments then, boom, you now have an adaptive template that auto-adjusts as you change the clip's length. That's exactly what I'm wanting, but instead of building it in Pr, I'd like to build it in Ae (which is Adobe's intended program for doing heavy-lifting keyframe work in the first place).

I'd also expect/desire for any EG keyframes set in Ae to be brought over automatically to Pr. Without this as an option, Essential Graphics' utility is greatly limited for me.

[aTomician]

The link I posted in the description is wrong, for reference it can be found here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/is-there-any-way-to-keyframe-an-ae-mogrt-in-...

Great to see so much support for this, it's now in the top 50 requests for Premiere Pro features! Disappointing that there's no response from Adobe after 4 years - it really isn't hard just to say "we've noticed but we don't have capacity to work on this yet" so we don't feel completely ignored... but hey.... we're only customers!

[Mike-Berry]

Hi -

We do see this thread and have responded multiple times, as recently as a few months ago. We know this is a request, but there are a number of complications and we have not had the capacity to take this on to date.

Mike

[Paul Slemmer]

I'll add my voice to this thread and say this feature would be extremely useful for the creation of more detailed text templates as mogrts.

I'm the creator of a very simple but widely used preset for text in AE. Myself and now my users have noticed the benefit of using this preset in mogrts for Premiere. That's already been done with much success, but exposing the timing functionality to Pr would only be possible if keyframe and/or marker tracks were modifiable in Pr.

As mentioned in the forum thread, the UI for this is all there if you right click the fx icon on a mogrt in the timeline. To be a little bold, I find it unacceptable that adding this functionality has not been addressed in the almost 4 years since its posting, as it affects a flagship feature of not one but two apps. In fact, the presence of a vestigal UI that does nothing should qualify this as a bug not a nice-to-have.

In addition to the use cases described, this is a relevant topic to some time artifacts when using Protected Regions, namely that any looping/random motion in the unprotected regions is sped up. Short of overhauling that feature, the addition of keyframe-able essential graphics properties would give mogrt creators a different pipeline to use if such time artifacts affect them.

If any of the complications mentioned are related to decisions in functionality (how keyframes are overridden, etc) I would be more than happy to work with the development team to understand how those decisions would be perceived from the user's end.

[Mike-Berry]

Hi Paul -

The complications are not at the UI/UX level. They are at the communication level between the Pr and AE code, particularly for mogrts that require dynamic link.

Mike

[aTomician]

Thanks Mike, really appreciate your response.

Paul and Levi, this may or may not help but I've had some success with a few workarounds:

- One thing I've done is add duration controls, and tied the animation in with a duration. I can set the duration of either the whole mogrt or an individual effect, and the animation changes it's speed or timing based on that.

- For following a tracking point, I've overlaid 2 mogrts before where one entire clip follows the motion tracking using the standard Motion controls, the other clip is static but both tie together at the same position which can be entered into both mogrts. Hacky but it did the trick.

- I also considered making a script that could insert a mogrt over and over, each is one frame duration, and the script would set certain values for the controls, effectively a makeshift animated mogrt. I haven't needed it enough yet to seriously look into this though and whether it can be done.

I've attached an screenshot of one that uses a duration slider to control how long before the graphic animates out. I think this one also used the length of the text to change some animation timings too. So simple animating can be done by building it in, but it's much more complex.

[Alexander25257082u23b]

For my use case, a 'List' animation is created, where the keyframing could be used to expose indexed lines in a text animation. It would be very convenient to keyframe the active lines so that the client could control when list entries become visible. Graphical personality could then be introduced at the animation level as well. This could keep the clients workload down to "write the list" and "select visible lines" with optional fade-in / fade-out mechanisms.

It would also be convenient if the mogrt in PrPro could utilize markers to indicate progress. This would allow parameters to be enforced uniformly across all transition points. I yield that this is slightly trivial since keyframes could accomplish all of this, but there are already supported effects (Opacity Flash - Layer Markers) that provide this sort of a workflow and it seems reasonable to consider such a mechanism.

Crude example attached. The start/end essential properties support a dynamic keyframing that the user can control, but they have to splice multiple mogrts back-to-back to simulate list progression over talking points. Keyframing would just allow a single slider to indicate the end of the list, or even start/end sliders could be separated and used.

[Christiaan1]

Hello Adobe, time to take the next step and make Premiere Pro even more PRO? 🙂
What is the status on this one?

[Alexander Büche]

Bumping this again! Being able to keframe e.g. the Position of a layer inside the EGP would make EG sooooooo much better! I have already read in this thread that I am not alone with MOGRTs that have lines running from a POI to the corresponding text layer. It already is great that you can adapt the position of the POI but on a video that point never is still, so being able to keyframe that POI and animate its position seems so sensibel! Please, Adobe. Make! It! Happen!

[Jeff27933795iycf]

Bump. Running into this issue now and could use this feature request

[Joolsey1973]

I have just come to this problem. I was hoping to do all my editing with keyable templates like you can with Apple motion. 

[DaciaSaenz]

Hi Y'all... 
This isn't supported because properties that get added to the Essential Graphics Panel and get exported to Mogrtland can only represent 1 value at a time. 
The control in Premiere can only tell Tiny Inception After Effects (nested inside Premiere Pro to make Mogrts work) “make this Opacity 60” ... it can’t tell Tiny Inception AE, “make the opacity go from 20 - 60 in 3 seconds from time 1 to time 4.”

It's a limitation in how the communication between Premiere and Tiny Inception AE works. 

One control can only be one value once we're in Premiere Pro.

But there are a couple of workarounds if we just abstract things a bit.

You can add add a few keyframes to a property and then add controls to those individual keyframes so that you can change those values once you're in Premiere. 

There are a couple of ways to accomplish this.

We could:

• Add two sliders to control the value for each of the keyframes and then use a linear expression to make it all come together.

• Or we could even hook up text controls to be the input control for those values.

I've added two example mogrts with each of these approaches in this link.

• Slider and Text Controls for Counting Animation Mogrts - Google Drive

You can open up the Mogrt natively in AE with the following steps:

1. Launch AE
2. Use File > Open
3. Select the Mogrt file
4. Follow the dialog that pops up and asks you what folder you want top extract the project to
5. and boom you've got the .aep
   Every Mogrt has the .aep and related media inside 

The Number Range mogrt uses two sliders to drive keyframe 1 and keyframe 2 values + a linear expression.
This is the most basic set up and the drawback here is that the animation gets distracting when the number goes from singles, to tens, to hundreds. We'd prefer the first number not to move on the first digit and just expand from there. You may already have an expression that is performing this for you in your project so you may need to do some work to marry these functions.

The second Mogrt in the link uses two text controls and a slightly different approach than the first to keep the numbers counting up smoothly. I wanted to be able to change the font and font style so I chose to use text controls. This means the end-user can only input numbers into the text control. But a comment in the Mogrt can easily guide this.

You may notice something different about this expression setup when you open it. I'm using a .jsx file with functions that make it a little bit easier to do some complex stuff. The .jsx file stores a ton of complex code that allows us to use simpler terms for functions, and add arguments to those functions in a clearer way. It's kind of like "wiggle()"... wiggle is actually a really complex block of code that got abstracted to something easier to use.

The .jsx file in the Mogrt I shared is a collection of functions that are meant to make complex expressions a bit easier to get into, and can improve performance.

There are about 40 functions that were designed with Mogrt authors in mind. 

My favorite solution to the "can't keyframe in Premiere problem" limitation is to use a combo of a few functions called "keyframesToControllers" and "retimeKeyframes" that give you the power to not only change the values of specific keyframes but also slip them in time. The other amazing thing about both of these functions is that your curves are respected even after making changes. Add Responsive Time to your Mogrt and rig some controls to some stand-in keyframes and you've got some basic keyframing-actions (i.e. setting values and changing them in time) in Premiere. 

Here are some links if you want to learn more about these.

• How to use the Creative Expression Library
• A glossary of all of the functions in the CEL
• The .jsx file needed to use the functions in the CEL and sample project

There is also another collection of functions that are really cool too if you want to go down a rabbit hole.

aeFunctions | Expression Basics

I hope this gives you enough to get your Mogrt where you want! And please reach out if you have any follow-up questions.

Cheers,

Dacia

[R Neil Haugen]

Dacia, you really provide some wondrous help and ideas.

Thanks!

[Paul Slemmer]

Thank you for the extensive suggestions for how to work around this! Genuinely helpful and there are some real gems in this.

Is there a reason why that communication between Pr and its tiny version of Ae can't be the subject of future development? Surely it can't require a complete rebuild of that version of Ae running within Premiere, just* a new pipeline for getting data into it? It seems like the reward on this one would make it worthy of some development resources.

*all this said, I know "just" may not be the appropriate word for the task at hand.

[Mike-Berry]

Mainly that it is hard. I wrote part of it once as an experiment and it kinda worked sometimes, but had a lot of intractable issues. It is definitely on our list of things to add to AE Mogrt support but not currently at the top.

Mike

[Gabby16bit]

Well can't way to have a more easy approach to this, i'm preparing more than 200 titles, and the process should be faster i hope it will become a priority soon. Thank you!

[E11World]

You'd think that after so many years, they would've made this work as it should've been part of he initial release. I can't believe it's not possible still.

[jstrawn]

@E11World Fair point... So please see Mike Berry's comment from late July 2023.

[rachelcenter]

@R Neil Haugen Please show me how because I dont see any keyframe parameters once my AE mogrt enters premiere. I'm in the Effects Control

[R Neil Haugen]

An Ae created mogrt doesn't allow for changes except for those given by the mogrt creator.

However, you can open the mogrt in Ae and make any changes you want.

A mogrt created in Premiere allows for doing key frames in Premiere.