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What is the difference between After Effects and Premiere Pro?

Community Beginner ,
Apr 15, 2012 Apr 15, 2012

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(note; Cross posted in other applicable forums)

Ok, that is the gist of my question, now for the clarification and reasons behind it.

Imagine for a minute that there is a person who has heard of all these wonderful products and wants to work with them to possibly change careers. Now imagine this person is a noob and has only a bit of creativity, a sprinkling of imagination, and absolutely no experience whatsoever in anything resembling a professional graphic arts, media, etc career except for some dabbling around with oil paints, watercolor, pastels, acrylics, and occasionally charcoal.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your persepctive I do work on computers so those basics are covered. So now you understand my absolute lack of knowledge.

I have been checking and finally bought Production Premium thinking I may be able to express something in Flash. The problem I am having is (other than an outdated computer) what is the real difference between the two programs I asked about? There seems to be some overlapping in their functions. Sort of a different route to accomplish the same thing. I've read the blurbs on the website and both sound very similar to my uneducated ears (eyes? mixed simile alert).

If someone could kindly explain to me the reasons to use either of the two products and what they can do differently I would greatly appreciate it. I purchased CS5.5 Production Premium and currently have it loaded on my laptop before I install 64 bit Windows on the desktop (both at 32 bit at this time) so I currently have the trial on the laptop. I understand the differences between Illustrator and photoshop  but these two are confounding. Also I do understand the differences between 32 bit After Effects/Premier Pro and 64 bit seems to be the spiffy Mercury Playback Engine. (a quick thank you to Adobe for including the 32 bit CS4 versions of those programs for luddites such as I!).

I await your wisdom.

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

LEGEND , Apr 15, 2012 Apr 15, 2012

Premiere Pro is a video editing solution.

After Effects is a video compositing solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_editing

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LEGEND ,
Apr 15, 2012 Apr 15, 2012

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Premiere Pro is a video editing solution.

After Effects is a video compositing solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_editing

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LEGEND ,
Apr 16, 2012 Apr 16, 2012

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my absolute lack of knowledge.

This isn't quite the best place to resolve such an absolute lack of knowledge.  It's more of a place to fill in small gaps in knowlege.

To correct such an absolute lack, I very strongly recommend a formal education first.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 16, 2012 Apr 16, 2012

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To correct such an absolute lack, I very strongly recommend a formal education first.

Jim, maybe you should leave out the word 'formal'. There are many around here without a 'formal' education, but who have come to grasps with the basics of editing and I count myself among them (sh*t, do I have such an inflated ego?). Of course you can argue I'm an utter nitwit, since I am an autodidact and thus had an idiot for a teacher, being a self educated person without 'formal' education in video editing (I have a masters degree in economics, but that does not count at all here) but hey, I think I can get by with some elementary basics. Of course, when things get difficult, I hope I can get people like yourself with a formal education to help me and not shove me off by saying get a 'formal' education first.

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Enthusiast ,
Apr 17, 2012 Apr 17, 2012

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I have a formal bachelor's degree education in production (broadcast journalism, focus in telecommunications). I can safely say that as good as my instructors all were, I only learned about 10% of my production knowlege (including editing) during my formal training. The rest has come from constant execution, working alongside others and Google. My instructors truly were experts...major broadcast news veterans and Hollywood-trained DP's and scriptwriters. I never felt cheated or shortchanged by my formal education, but I understood almost implicitly that in order to get anywhere I was going to need to do more than simply graduate with high honors....I needed to keep asking questions the rest of my life, keep seeking support and knowlege from others. This forum, though specialized to a particular product, is nothing short of that exchange of knowlege that is required as a follow-up course by even the most thorough completion of a collegiate degree.

So anyway, +1 Harm.

To the OP, shooternz has the best answers for you posted already. Main thing you need to avoid is assuming that since both applications can ingest video and put it on a timeline that they are both editing video. After Effects is specialized in frame compositing, and as such, it is most likely one of the worst long-form video editing applications that you could use (as it is, of course, not a video editor at all). After Effects must render every frame it plays more or less, which you can imagine gets rather difficult on a 20 minute television program with 40,000+ frames of video in many cases. Rather, After Effects best helps with general effects and compositing (think green screen work), motion graphics for short animations (think about a corporate logo animation at the beginning of a feature), motion tracking (putting a shot of a news report inside a television screen on a set and making it look like the actors are actually watching it while the camera dollies left to right behind them).

Premiere is where everything finally comes together. You can do much effects work in Premiere Pro, and some fairly complex motion graphics and title animations, but it's not specialized to that. Likewise, you can do a LOT of audio editing inside PPro, but you're better off using Audition for very specialized audio edits (or Pro Tools if you prefer) because Audition lets you view audio in different ways, apply more advanced audio effects, etc.

Good luck!

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Guru ,
Apr 17, 2012 Apr 17, 2012

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I totally agree that"formal" education in a subject only gets us so far. Working on the job teaches us what we need to know for our own peculiar needs. And in my own case I never came close to fully understanding a subject until I actually tried to teach it, and sometimes not even then.

Christian Jolly wrote:

I can safely say that as good as my instructors all were, I only learned about 10% of my production knowlege

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 19, 2012 Apr 19, 2012

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Thank you all for clarifying the difference. From the other post I got this from Mylenium:

After Effects --> Compositing

Premiere Pro --> Editing

Flash --> (interactive) Web authoring

Which basically told me what I needed to know and then Christian went further and provided more details.

Thank you for your assistance.

I realize that oftentimes posting on the web does not the nuances of spoken english so sometimes remarks that come across as snooty were not intended to read that way.

Again thank you for the information and I've already purchased After Effects Apprentice to begin the task of creating my masterpiece!

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Apr 20, 2012 Apr 20, 2012

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Start here to learn Premiere Pro: http://adobe.ly/psbYc4

Start here to learn After Effects: http://adobe.ly/bjBT3P

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New Here ,
Apr 06, 2015 Apr 06, 2015

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New Here ,
Apr 06, 2015 Apr 06, 2015

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Best reply! Thanks so much, Steveefx, this video was very helpful.

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Explorer ,
Apr 11, 2016 Apr 11, 2016

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It’s four years since this discussion was first here, but I found this on Google today when asking myself this very question. Before I continue, however, I will say to all of you “don’t anyone underestimate yourselves regardless of how you obtained your education.” Just portray confidence to future clients, and you will do well.

I right now am knowledgeable of a varieties of basic video editing and layering techniques I learned off and on within the past 10 years. For that, Premier Pro is my favorite program because of its quality and user-friendliness. A rare combination of video editors.

I did wonder, though, if it did have some limitations. I wasn’t sure because I used it only a handful of times since 2013 (used others before that). I know how the original poster of this question felt, too. I just downloaded several CC apps with PhotoShop and Premier Pro being my most-used ones so far. However, I am still trying to decide how the others including Ae will help me.

The response on the difference between editing and compositing on this thread is probably the most helpful with the links to the Adobe tutorials being the second most helpful reply. It confirms I probably will find After Effects very useful. By the way, it'd be nice if Ae had a green screen built in. Anyway....

Now, I wonder what the difference is between After Effects and Flash. After Effects probably would be more helpful than Flash because visual design is a strength of mine but Flash not so much. I will now look that up, but if anyone has any thoughts, let me know. I’m most giving feedback as this post does answer my initial question.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 13, 2016 Apr 13, 2016

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You use AE to fix, improve or change a shot you cannot fix, improve or change in a NLE. You do not cut or edit in AE except for the occasional short sequence. Any compositing or visual effects you have seen in any movie or commercial can be accomplished inside AE with the use of AE's standard set of effects and the appropriate 3rd party effects or scripts packages. Trying to cut a 5 minute music video in AE because every shot has an effect of some kind is a poor use of the product. You rough your edit in a NLE like Premiere Pro and then you bring every shot you want to work your magic on and you work on those shots one at a time, then you either render them (most times the preferred method for extensive effects) an then return to your NLE with your improved shots and do the final edit. If you are really professional about your approach you then take the audio you have mixed and timed in Premiere Pro into Audition and finalize the audio track to produce the desired mix (Dolby - Surround Sound - etc), then you go back to Premiere Pro and make one final picture and sound check before opening up Speed Grade to do the final color correction. The end product would then be rendered to an archival production master format (I like 10 bit 444 lossless for almost everything, full float for other projects) and the delivery copies are rendered from your production master with the appropriate metadata added for copyright, author. In the long run this process is much faster for projects that are more complex than something like a news story or a quick explainer video than trying to do the same thing in AE.

I hope this helps. Premiere Pro is for editing Movies, Audition is for editing sound, and After Effects is for creating visual effects shots and short sequences only. If you need web based interactivity then Animate CC, the new Flash, is the tool to put together the most complicated projects but there are other web based and interactive tools out there that are better suited to simple projects.

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