Dynamic Link and After Effects

Learn to share and edit compositions between After Effects and Premiere using Dynamic Link.

About Dynamic Link

In the past, sharing media assets among post-production applications 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 offers an alternative to this workflow. You can create dynamic links between After Effects and Premiere. Creating a dynamic link is as simple as importing any other asset type. 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.

Create and link to After Effects compositions with Dynamic Link

You can create new After Effects compositions, and dynamically link to them from Adobe Premiere. You can also dynamically link to existing After Effects compositions from Adobe Premiere.

Create a composition from clips in Premiere

You can replace selected clips in Premiere with a dynamically linked After Effects composition based on those clips. The new composition inherits the sequence settings from Premiere.

Create a dynamically linked composition from Premiere

Creating a new dynamically linked composition from Premiere launches After Effects. After Effects then creates a project and composition with the dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, and audio sample rate of the originating project. (If After Effects is already running, it creates a composition in the current project.) The new composition name is based on the Premiere project name, followed by Linked Comp [x].

Link to an existing composition

For best results, match composition settings (such as dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate) to the settings in the Premiere.

Modify a dynamically linked composition in After Effects

Use the Edit Original command in Adobe Premiere to modify a linked After Effects composition. Once the composition is open in After Effects, you can change the composition without having to use the Edit Original command again.

The changes made in After Effects appear in Adobe Premiere. Adobe Premiere stops using any preview files rendered for the clip before the changes.

Delete a dynamically linked composition or clip

You can delete a linked composition from an Adobe Premiere project at any time, even if the composition is used in a project.

You can delete linked clips from the timeline of an Adobe Premiere sequence or timeline at any time.

Create a linked sequence in Adobe Premiere with Dynamic Link

Link to a new sequence

Creating an Adobe Premiere sequence from After Effects launches Adobe Premiere. Adobe Premiere then creates a project and sequence with the dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, and audio sample rate of the originating project. (If Adobe Premiere is already running, it creates a sequence in the current project.)

Link to an existing sequence

For best results, match sequence settings and project settings in Adobe Premiere (such as dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate) to those settings in the After Effects project.

Do one of the following:

• In After Effects, select File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import Premiere Sequence. Choose an Adobe Premiere project, and then choose one or more sequences.
• Drag one or more sequences from the Adobe Premiere Project panel to the After Effects Project panel.

Dynamic Link performance

A linked clip can refer to a complex source composition. Actions you perform on the source composition require additional processing time depending on the complexity. After Effects applies the actions and makes the final data available to Adobe Premiere using the global performance cache and the persistent disk cache features. These features improve After Effects performance by using cached frames when Premiere requests them.

To reduce playback delays, do one of the following:

• Take the linked composition offline
• Disable a linked clip to temporarily stop referencing a composition
• Replace the dynamically linked composition with the rendered file using the Render and Replace feature in Premiere (Clip > Render and Replace).  

If you commonly work with complex source compositions, increase your RAM or upgrade to a faster processor.

Export to Adobe Media Encoder

To encode After Effects compositions, add the item to the encoding queue in Adobe Media Encoder, then select an encoding preset or create your own custom settings for rendering. In After Effects, you can add a composition to the Media Encoder queue using one of the following options:

• File > Export > Add to Media Encoder Queue
• Composition > Add to Media Encoder Queue

When you add a composition or project to the Adobe Media Encoder queue, After Effects launches Adobe Media Encoder with the compositions listed in the queue. You can encode using presets or using custom settings.

More like this

• Working with Adobe Premiere and After Effects
• Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere