18 Copying and Pasting from Premiere Pro to After Effects

#18 Copying and Pasting from Premiere Pro to After Effects

Adobe offers a number of ways to pass content back and forth between Premiere Pro and After Effects. First is copying and pasting content from Premiere Pro to After Effects. This works well for getting content into After Effects, but you may have some issues returning them to Premiere Pro if that's your goal.

Filter unavailable?

What should you do? Save your work as an After Effects project and import it into Premiere Pro via Dynamic Link, which is technique #20. Or render the file to DV format and import the resulting file back into Premiere Pro. Visit www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/330388.html for a complete list of items that won't copy and paste from Premiere Pro to After Effects.

For example, suppose you're editing in Premiere Pro and decide to apply a chroma key effect in After Effects. Here's how it works:

In Premiere Pro, select the clips, right-click, and choose Copy from the pop-up menu (Figure 18a).

Figure 18a. To copy from Premiere Pro to After Effects, select the clips, right-click, and choose Copy.

Ways to Create a New Composition

The most obvious way to create a new composition to contain pasted content is by choosing Composition > New Composition as mentioned above. Another way is to create it from within Premiere Pro as described in #20. Either way, you should choose duration carefully; life is simpler when duration matches that of your content.

Open After Effects, and select Composition > New Composition to open a new composition.

In After Effects, click the timeline panel and choose Edit > Paste. After Effects inserts the clips into the composition at the same location as the clip in Premiere Pro (Figure 18b).

Figure 18b. Here are the pasted clips in an After Effects composition. Note that After Effects pasted them at the exact same timeline position as Premiere Pro.

Note

According to the current time display in both figures, the clips start at 20:01 on both timelines. This means that once you paste it back into Premiere Pro, the starting point of the chroma key clip will be exactly where you want it, at 20:01.

Saving a Premiere Pro Project from After Effects

After Effects can save compositions as Premiere Pro projects (choose File > Export > Adobe Premiere Pro Project), but if you apply effects in After Effects that aren't available in Premiere Pro, Premiere Pro can't load them. Overall, the easiest and most powerful way to share your work from After Effects into Premiere Pro is to use Dynamic Link, as described in #20.

With your clip now placed in an After Effects composition, apply the After Effects effect of your choice. For example, I use the fabulous Keylight chroma key plug-in on the green-screen clip.

Once you've applied the effect to your satisfaction, copy and paste the clip back into Premiere Pro, making sure that the current-time indicator is set at the desired insertion point.

Note

There are limitations as to the types of effects and other project elements that you can copy from Premiere Pro into After Effects. Premiere Pro won't recognize any After Effects filters that it doesn't share. There are also a number of other After Effects content types that don't paste into Premiere Pro, like text layers.

In the example described in this how-to, you'll notice that the green-screen clip reappeared in Premiere Pro totally un-chroma keyed! Click the Effect Controls tab, and you'll see the message "Offline (filter unavailable)" (Figure 18c).