Dynamic link between After Effects and Premiere Pro - an absolute mess?

[WeAreMoose]

Hi,

We're currently experimenting with Team Projects, everything works well and makes sense - until it comes to the inclusion of after effects.

1.) 'Replace with After Effects Sequence' is greyed out - A massive, massive loss in my opinion, how easy it was to just highlight a single clip and quickly stabilize it,

     why is this gone? Is there a way to bring it back?

2.) OK, let's try something else. So I'm opening the Premiere Pro Team Project in After Effects to add a simple lower third. The Timeline is not a timeline though, it's being interpreted as a single video         file? Why did After Effects all of a sudden lose the ability to open Premiere Pro sequences?

3.) OK, So I'm dragging this video file into a new After Effects Sequence. I add simple text. click 'Share my changes to Team Projects' jump back into Premiere Pro...and...The newly created After

    Effects sequence is offline! I go back into After Effects, delete the videofile (which is supposed to be a sequence) from the sequence and it comes online in Premiere Pro. How does any of this make sense?

We're relying heavily on Dynamic link, any help is appreciated.

We're on Windows 10, Both Premiere Pro and After Effects are the latest version.

Thanks

[PeterELee]

1. "Replace With After Effects Composition" will be enabled for Team Projects in the just-announced version of Premiere Pro (the feature was delayed because it needed to be re-engineered to work with Team Projects).

2. Although the asset type in the Team Project panel is listed as "footage" in AE, Premiere Sequences are rendered via DynamicLink in a Team Project, just as in standalone. I'm not sure why they aren't listed with a different asset type, TBH. I've never noticed it before, but I'll file a bug.

3. If you're moving between AE and Pr on the same machine, you do not need to share your changes each time (though it doesn't hurt). The other application should update itself shortly after you switch to it. When you create a new composition in AE, then switch to Premiere, the composition will initially appear in Premiere as "pending" while it makes a DynamicLink connection in the background. Once the connection is made, the AE composition will appear online in Premiere. Not sure if you were running into this in your example, but there is a limit to the amount of cross-application nesting that's possible. You can put an AE comp into a Pr sequence, for example, but only if the AE comp does not already contain a Pr sequence.

[WeAreMoose]

Hi Peter,

First of all thanks for your response, very happy to hear that Dynamic Link will make a comeback.

About the 'Offline' issue, for some reason the AE sequence would always be offline in Premiere Pro, no matter how long I wait, if there's footage

in said sequence which has been dynamic-linked to After Effects. So to clarify: I open the Team Project in After Effects, create a new sequence,

drag the PPro sequence into an After Effects sequence (the sequence is super simple, just one 10 sec clip of footage) and it goes offline.

If I remove the PPro Sequence from the After effects sequence, it goes online again.

Thanks

Jannick

[PeterELee]

Hi Jannick,

What you are seeing is a current limitation of Team Projects in After Effects and Premiere. Nesting of Premiere sequences in AE compositions and vice/versa is limited to one level only, and only the "containing" application can render the outer sequence or comp. There is a similar limitation to cross-application nesting between standalone Premiere and After Effects projects, though it's slightly looser.

For example, if you place an AE comp into a Pr sequence in a Team Project, the sequence will render in Pr, but will appear as a placeholder in AE. Similarly, if you place a Pr sequence into an AE comp, AE will be able to render that comp, but it will appear as a placeholder in Pr. This limitation avoids circular references where each application might be waiting for the other to render a different part of the same Team Project.

Only one level of cross-application nesting is allowed between standalone Premiere and AE project files, too. The difference is that, in a standalone project, Premiere will render an AE comp containing a Pr sequence via DynamicLink instead of showing a placeholder, and vice-versa. You still can't insert such a comp into a Pr sequence, though, so there's not much you can do with it beyond seeing what it looks like.

Can you tell me more about the workflow that you are trying to accomplish? What would you do in AE with a Pr sequence that contained an AE comp, given the limitations that already exist outside of a Team Project?

Thanks,

-Peter

[WeAreMoose]

Hi Peter!

Thanks again for your response.

What I'm trying to accomplish is probably simpler than it appears,

Let's say I want to track an arrow to a persons head: I used to right click the clip, 'Replace with After Effects Sequence',

Do my After FX work on it, and 'Render and Replace' it in Premiere Pro.

Because this doesn't work anymore, I'm trying to find a good workflow to isolate my clip in my timeline and do said amends to it,

But everytime I open a PPro Sequence in After Effects, it's just being treated as a video file rather than an openable sequence.

So I guess this is where I go wrong, I drag the sequence into an AFX sequence and this is where I hit those mentioned limitation.

But how do you suggest should I work to stabilize a single clip from a PPro sequence in AFX using dynamic link?

Thanks!
Jannick

[PeterELee]

Hi Jannick,

Thanks for the details! As I mentioned before, "Replace with After Effects Composition" for Team Projects will be available in the next release of Premiere Pro (due soon). In the mean time, there are a couple of options that involve a few more steps:

1. Fully manual - note the in and out points of the trimmed clip in Premiere; switch to AE and find the footage item; apply the in and out points in AE and insert the trimmed footage into a new comp; apply tracking. That AE comp should render correctly in Premiere, since it does not contain a Premiere sequence.

2. Slightly more automated option (but actually more steps) - in Premiere, select the clip to track; double-click to reveal the trimmed clip in the Source monitor; right-click and choose "Make subclip" to create a properly-trimmed copy of the clip; with the subclip selected in the Team Project window, choose File/Export/Media... and check the "Import into project" option. This will render a new piece of footage with only the desired frames. In AE, add the trimmed footage to a comp and track as above.

There's no question that "Replace with After Effects Composition" will make this process easier. I'm sorry for the inconvenience in the mean time.

-Peter