Premiere Pro After Effects workflow

[lauriera]

I’ve used Premiere for years and have now graduated up to Adobe Production CS4 Suite. I’m not a novice but maybe not up to being called “intermediate.”

Here’s my problem: I’m having a hard time understanding the flow and interaction between Premiere and After Effects. I’ve googled it and found everything from, “I edit in Premiere and just do titles in AE” to “I edit completely in AE.”

I’ve edited a short video together and then right clicked the clips and selected “Replace with AE Composition” to add some green screen keying and that sort of works, but then it seems to lose information or not save properly… and I’m now officially confused.

In general, I’m wondering what process do you out there that use both apps use? Do you edit completely in Premiere, use the Replace with AE Composition? Or do you set up the clips first in AE, then dynamically link them into Premiere assets to be added to a sequence?

Thanks! – Laurie

[Grinner Hester]

Ya just dop the effects in after effects, Heavier compisiting, animated masking, rotoscoping, 2D animation, multiplayering… AE is not an editing application. It’s an effects tool to compliment your NLE. I’m in Avid land so I’m use to using AE as my DVE as Avid’s DVE is still from 1994.

[Omtech]

I dont use CS4 but I think you can just right click on the phootage you want the effects on and chose edit in after effects. whne you are done just save it and it will automayicaly change in Premiere. this what I heard from one moderator here.

I use cs3 so what I do is to take the phootage to after effects and whatever i want with graphics and…. save it then I open premiere pro and import AE composition.
that what I am certain of.

God bless you

[composite1]

Lauriera,

In the CS production series of software Premiere is your primary editing tool. Since CS3, you can create AFX comps within your Premiere project. I’ve tried it a few times and didn’t like it much as I am more comfortable working with AFX directly.

As Grinner mentioned, AFX is your primary compositing and visual effects program. With AFX, you create your elaborate titles, greenscreen compositing and visual effects like fake smoke, fire, rain, etc. You can do some of these things with the basic tool set in Premiere, but AFX is infinitely better suited for this.

On the other hand, Premiere is infinitely better suited for putting together all of your visual and audio components into a completed production than AFX is. In a nutshell in AFX you build your artistic components and put everything together in Premiere.

How ‘your workflow’ between the two programs goes depends on your style and comfort level with both programs. Believe it or not, AFX is far easier to use now than it used to be. Of course, the more complex stuff you want to make the steeper the learning curve will be. The cool thing about AFX is, there’s not a whole lot you can’t do with it. The hard part is figuring out the best way to do it.

At the simplest level, if your system is powerful enough you can run both programs simultaneously and switch back and forth as needed. Depending on how complex a comp you’re building, you may just want to work in AFX alone. But as I mentioned earlier, you can use the dynamic link from premiere to AFX and work with it that way. Ultimately, it will be up to you to determine a workflow that best suits you.

[Author]

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