Transferring from Premiere Pro to After Effects...(both CS3)

[dazza1008]

"I cut my footage in Premiere Pro and apply my effects in After Effects" - such a simple statement.

Backstory - I'm getting tired of the rather basic effects in Premiere (even though I might not know the full capability of it), so I thought that a good test would be a rather basic slideshow of still pics that I've completed in Premiere, and opening it in AE to see how it works.

I'm ASSUMING that anything Premiere can do, AE can do (and better). As in, there's no chance that AE won't recognise a Premiere effect.

I'm not actually up to the stage of learning effects - will be looking at tutorials for that.

So I went Import->File and double-clicked the sequence. Without touching anything, I went Composition -> Make Movie. And rendered in the render queue. Looking at the exported movie, first noticeable problem was that there was no sound. (I couldn't even see a sound setting in the render queue.) Second, some chunks were missing. :0 Just black where there should be pics.

Going back to AE, I could see that there was a clip where there's black, but it was pushed over to the right. Bringing it to where it should be still showed black. Expanding it, the keyframes were over to the left of where they should be. Highlighting them all and dragging them to the current time did show an image. But there is no 'snap' in AE, and it wasn't put back perfectly (I didn't really try, though)

First topic I found (through search): http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... e#p1226941

if you go file>import>import premiere project, or if you copy a sequence and paste it into an ae comp, you should keep your edits. however i never found this to be frame accurate, and it's a pain in the ass to trim everything back down.
also, any motion, fx or transitions you applied in premiere will probably be lost.

Yeah, it's not frame accurate, that's for sure. But I think the transitions are OK (although the fades are in red in AE, but I assume that's the specific colour for them)

If I've got to do all the work again, then it's not an option. XD

cs4 dynamic link is where it's at, but you only get it in the production premium and master collection bundles. bridge is for managing your project files, it doesn't link between ae and ppro.

I've got CS3, so that's out.

another option is to export an edl (edit decision list) from premiere, and import that into ae.

I did export an EDL, but going through Google and such, I can't see how to open it in AE. :/ (Import->File doesn't recognise EDL as a usable type)

best way is to work scene by scene though - render out or copy/paste the clips you need from ppro into an ae comp, do the work over there, then render out with project link enabled. bring the rendered output into your premiere timeline to replace the original clips.

I actually can't follow that. ^^; And besides, with the next vid that will hopefully combine still pics and select footage, there will be so many effects that I'd like to use AE without having to use Premiere for effects.
(but does that mean that you can have any AE effect in Premiere? That would be awesome)


Second problem was that I couldn't hear any sound in AE. Thanks to this topic http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... ects+sound
pressing the . key on the numpad played sound, 0 key to render workspace. *phew*

Anyway, I rendered again and absolutely no sound in the export. :/

Demux your audio from the video stream.
Open VDM and click on streamlist to export your .wav audio. There you have. A single soundfile in wav.

I can't follow that. ^^; (means in another program, not AE?) And besides, I'm using an mp3 for sound, no video attached.

However, I do know how to export in WAV format from Premiere, so that's not a problem - I could get the audio fixed first and into one file, then work off that. (and Premiere can't export in mp3 - it's simply not an option XD) I don't know if AE can export in mp3 because I can't get it to export any audio. I can't even see an option to just export audio.


So, I hope it's clear that I've tried to do some research, but still... at this point I'd really appreciate some specialist advice. There are so many options, and I'm not sure how to approach it. Thanks to anyone! ^^

[BasharOfTheAges]

How about just opening the premiere project file in AE?

[dazza1008]

How about just opening the premiere project file in AE?

Yeah, that was this bit - sorry if it wasn't clear (some clips were out of place, and I don't want to have to re-edit everything - may as well start from scratch in AE if that's the case)

So I went Import->File and double-clicked the sequence. Without touching anything, I went Composition -> Make Movie. And rendered in the render queue. Looking at the exported movie, first noticeable problem was that there was no sound. (I couldn't even see a sound setting in the render queue.) Second, some chunks were missing. :0 Just black where there should be pics.

Going back to AE, I could see that there was a clip where there's black, but it was pushed over to the right. Bringing it to where it should be still showed black. Expanding it, the keyframes were over to the left of where they should be. Highlighting them all and dragging them to the current time did show an image. But there is no 'snap' in AE, and it wasn't put back perfectly (I didn't really try, though)

[BasharOfTheAges]

I'm not talking about File -> Import. I'm talking about File -> Open Project [Files of type *] -> select your .pproj file. Then move your sequence1 to the timeline. Unless they happen to do the same thing... then ignore me. I can't tell if anything I have on hand actually works because while Premiere is cool with 23.976fps footage in a 23.98fps project file, AE apparently flips it's shit at that.

[dazza1008]

I'm not talking about File -> Import. I'm talking about File -> Open Project [Files of type *] -> select your .pproj file. Then move your sequence1 to the timeline. Unless they happen to do the same thing... then ignore me. I can't tell if anything I have on hand actually works because while Premiere is cool with 23.976fps footage in a 23.98fps project file, AE apparently flips it's shit at that.

I think it does the same thing - by "move your sequence1 to the timeline" I double-clicked it. If I clicked and dragged, everything was at the beginning. Double-clicking preserves the edits.

Except the blank spaces were exactly where they were before.

Plus, everything in that vid was still pics, so framerates is one thing I don't have to worry about. *phew* Thanks for the heads-up on that, though.

[jessD]

I'm not talking about File -> Import. I'm talking about File -> Open Project [Files of type *] -> select your .pproj file. Then move your sequence1 to the timeline. Unless they happen to do the same thing... then ignore me. I can't tell if anything I have on hand actually works because while Premiere is cool with 23.976fps footage in a 23.98fps project file, AE apparently flips it's shit at that.

I've had this unfortunate experience as well. What I had to do was to export each frame as .psd files (if you have transparency) and import that into After Effects. At that point, you simply have raw psd files to do whatever with. I'm still using cs3 by the way, maybe there are better import options in 4 or 5, but I doubt it.

[Emotive]

OK, about the audio problem - is it in the project, but not exporting? It's not ticked by default. After Composition -> Make Movie, you want to look at the settings, enable sound and change whatever else you want to change before pressing render.

best way is to work scene by scene though - render out or copy/paste the clips you need from ppro into an ae comp, do the work over there, then render out with project link enabled. bring the rendered output into your premiere timeline to replace the original clips.

I actually can't follow that. ^^; And besides, with the next vid that will hopefully combine still pics and select footage, there will be so many effects that I'd like to use AE without having to use Premiere for effects.
(but does that mean that you can have any AE effect in Premiere? That would be awesome)

You misinterpreted that, he's not saying you should do effects in premiere, nor that AE effects can be imported in Premiere. He's saying:
1. Throw some clips you want to use for the first, say, 20 seconds on the timeline, time them to the beat or anything else it is you do.
2. Import that project file in AE.
3. Make any timing fixes if it wasn't frame accurate (it's a small part so shouldn't be too much work), make effects, do your magic.
4. Export as lossless.
5. Import the result in Premiere, throw it on those first 20 seconds, proceed to next 20 seconds.

^I agree that's the best method by the way!