In
the past, sharing media assets among post-production applications
has required you to render and export your work from one application
before importing it into another. This workflow was inefficient
and time-consuming. If you wanted to change the original asset,
you rendered and exported the asset again. Multiple rendered and
exported versions of an asset consume disk space, and they can lead
to file-management challenges.
Dynamic Link, a feature of Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium and Master Collection,
offers an alternative to this workflow. You can create dynamic links between After
Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Encore.
Creating a dynamic link is as simple as importing any other type
of asset. Dynamically linked assets appear with unique icons and
label colors to help you identify them. Dynamic links are saved
in projects generated by these applications.
If you purchase Premiere Pro as a standalone
product (which includes Adobe Media Encoder and Adobe
Encore), Dynamic Link works betweenPremiere
Pro, Adobe Media Encoder and Encore.
Changes you make in After Effects to a
dynamically linked composition appear immediately in the linked
clips in Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore. Changes
you make to dynamically linked sequences in AdobePremiere
Pro appear immediately in After Effects and
Encore. You don’t have to render or save changes first.
Online resources about Dynamic Link
For
a video tutorial introducing Dynamic Link, see the Adobe
website.
John Dickinson provides a video tutorial on
the Motionworks website that shows how
to use Dynamic Link between After Effects and Premiere
Pro and between After Effects and Encore.
Tim
Kolb provides a video tutorial on the Adobe
website that demonstrates the creation of an interactive
DVD menu with Premiere Pro and Encore, using Dynamic
Link.
Andrew Devis explains how to use Dynamic Link from aPremiere
Pro user’s perspective in this video on the Creative Cow website.
Learn
more about Premiere Pro workflow for Dynamic
Link in this video by Jason Levine.
Linking to and from Adobe Premiere Pro
You
can send selected clips from Adobe Premiere Pro into After
Effectsas a composition or nested composition, replacing
the clips in AdobePremiere Pro with a dynamically
linked composition.
With Dynamic Link, you can also send sequences
from Adobe Premiere Pro into Encore for authoring
to DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or SWF files.
In addition to using Dynamic
Link, you can share content among applications in any of the following
ways:
copying and pasting between After
Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro
exporting After Effects projects to Adobe
Premiere Pro
using the Capture In Adobe Premiere Pro command
in After Effects
importing Adobe Premiere Pro projects
into After Effects
Linking to and from After Effects
When
you dynamically link to an After Effects composition
from AdobePremiere Pro or Encore, it appears
in the host application Project panel. You can use the dynamically
linked composition as you would any other asset. When you insert
a linked composition into the host application timeline, a linked
clip appears in the Timeline panel. A linked clip is simply a reference
to the linked composition in the Project panel. After
Effects renders the linked composition on a frame-by-frame basis
during playback in the host application.
There are two restrictions
on the use of dynamically linked clips betweenAfter Effects and Adobe
Premiere Pro. Both of these restrictions also apply
in reverse: they remain true if you switch composition and sequence:
If a sequence contains a composition, do not include that
sequence, or any sequence in which the sequence is nested, in any
dynamic link from the project of the included composition.
If a sequence contains a composition, do not include links
from that composition, or any composition nested in that composition,
back to any sequence.
In Adobe Premiere
Pro, you can do any of the following with a dynamically
linked After Effectscomposition:
preview it in the Source Monitor
set In and Out points for it
add it to a sequence
edit it with Adobe Premiere Pro tools
When
you add a linked composition that contains both video and audio
to a sequence, Adobe Premiere Pro inserts
linked video and audio clips in the timeline. You can unlink the
video from the audio to edit the clips separately.
In Encore,
you can do any of the following with a dynamically linked After
Effects composition:
create a motion
menu with it
insert it into a timeline
edit it with Encore tools
You can add a linkedAfter
Effects composition that contains both video and audio
to an Encore timeline. Encore inserts separate video and audio clips
in the timeline.
You can create
After
Effectscompositions from Encore menus, even without Dynamic
Link.
Linking to and from Encore
From Encore,
you can do any of the following with dynamically linked clips:
edit a sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro using
the Edit Original command
edit an After Effects composition
using the Edit Original command
update the markers in Encore to match the Encore chapter
markers in a sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro
Color and Dynamic Link
After
Effects works with the RGB (red, green, blue) color model. AdobePremiere Pro,
however, works with the YUV color model. When you work with a dynamically
linked composition, Adobe Premiere Pro either
converts it to YUV or retains the RGB colors, depending on the output
format.
Dynamically linked compositions are rendered in the
color depth of the After Effects project
(8, 16, or 32 bpc, depending on project settings). Set the After Effects project
color depth to 32 bpc if you’re working with HDR (high dynamic range)
assets.
In
Adobe Premiere Pro,
select a sequence. Then, choose Sequence > Sequence Settings.
In the Video Previews pane, select Maximum Bit Depth and Maximum Render
Quality to have
Adobe Premiere Pro process
at the highest possible quality. However, these options slow processing.
Saving and Dynamic Link
Save your After
Effects project at least once before creating a dynamic link from AdobePremiere
Pro or Encore to a composition within it. After that,
you do not have to save changes to the After Effects project
to see the changes in a linked composition in Adobe Premiere
Pro or Encore.
Using the
Save As command
to create a copy of an
After Effects project
does not change dynamic links made to the original project. Adobe
Premiere
Pro and Encore projects continue to use the original
project, not the copy, as the sources for their linked compositions.
You can, however, relink a dynamically linked clip to a composition
in the copy at any time.
Note: In After Effects,
you can choose File > Increment And Save. The
newly saved open project continues to serve frames to any client
projects containing dynamically linked compositions from the open After
Effects project.
