STEP 1
To illustrate this process, look at this example from a documentary on
earthquakes. In the timeline, we see the title, a Photoshop CS file
brought into Premiere Pro, over a shot of the San Andreas fault line in
California.
STEP 2
Let’s animate the title as if it was in an earthquake. By using "motion
sketch" in After Effects, you can move an object on the screen and have
After Effects "record" that movement in real time-a great way of
directly animating on the screen. (To try Motion Sketch in After
Effects, check out this tutorial: www.adobe.com/motion/tips/aftmsketch/main.html).
Clips in Premiere Pro can be copied and pasted into After Effects. We
can then apply motion sketch to one of the layers and copy them back
into Premiere Pro. Simply, copy and paste.
Premiere Pro and After Effects share keyframe information, such as
ease-in and ease-out, position, opacity, rotation, and scale
properties, which also move between the applications.
For this example, to move clips, including transformations, cross
dissolve transitions, and filter information, select the clips in the
timeline and choose "Edit > Copy."
In After Effects, create a new project, and a composition of the same
size and aspect ratio as that of the Premiere Pro project, and select
"Edit > Paste."
At this point, you should see the footage in After Effects.
STEP 3
The contents of the timeline may look different than in Premiere Pro,
but the results are the same. After Effects retains trimming
information for clips and where the clip existed in time (i.e., if you
copied a clip from 15 seconds into the timeline in Premiere Pro, AE
will place the pasted clip at 15 seconds in the AE timeline).
Nested sequences in Premiere Pro become nested compositions in AE. For
example, the "Earthquake Title" layer is an AE composition made from
the two Photoshop layers of the original title.
If you hold down the Alt key and double-click the Earthquakes
composition, this will open the Earthquake "comp" allowing you to see
the two Photoshop layers inside.
To animate the word "Earthquake" using Motion Sketch in After Effects,
select the layer, choose "Window > Motion Sketch" to bring up the
palette, and click the "Start Capture" button.
STEP 4:
After Effects will now wait for you to begin moving the layer, and
record its movement in real time. This can be done with a mouse (or a
Wacom tablet for a more natural feel). At the end of the clip, After
Effects will stop recording and Motion Sketch creates position
keyframes on the selected layer.
STEP 5:
In previous versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects, users would now
need to render a movie out of After Effects for use in Premiere Pro.
Now you have the option of copying and pasting footage back from After
Effects to Premiere Pro.
Select the Earthquake Photoshop layer in the Title composition, and
choose "Edit > Copy." This will copy the layer along with any
keyframe information attached to it.
In Premiere Pro, delete the existing layer from the Earthquake title
sequence, and choose "Edit > Paste" to paste in the animated version
from After Effects.
STEP 6:
The original "Intro" sequence now contains the animated version of the
layer including the keyframe information and those keyframes remain
visible and editable inside Premiere Pro.
Admittedly, this was a very simple example. A much more common scenario
is copying footage from Premiere Pro into After Effects, adding effects
or compositing information to it, then rendering the results back out
for use in Premiere Pro. For simple effects, it’s very easy to move
elements back and forth.
Remember: While effects like the Motion Tracker cannot be moved from
After Effects to Premiere Pro, layers to which motion tracking has been
applied can be moved, since the Motion Tracker applies position
keyframes to the targeted layer.
YOUR GUIDE
Daniel Brown, Video Evangelist, Adobe
With a traditional design background, Brown founded the core Web
development team at Metagraphics (now artmachine.com) in Palo Alto,
California. He joined Adobe in 1998. You can contact him at www.adobeevangelists.com.
Other Cool Features In Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5
Project Manager lets you archive projects and media for later recall
and trim projects to save only used media on disk for more efficient
use of storage.
Other Cool Features In Adobe After Effects 6.5
You can select layers by number, using the numeric keypad. For example,
type "11" to select layer eleven. To reveal all animated properties of
selected layers, press "U." To reveal all modified properties of
selected layers, press "UU."
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