Using Adobe Dynamic Link

At this point, we are mostly done with the compositions that will make up our trailer. We just need to combine them into a single composition. However, After Effects is really not designed to line up compositions the way a program like Adobe Premiere Pro can.

Luckily for us, we can easily import After Effects Compositions into Premiere (and import Premiere sequences into After Effects) using Adobe Dynamic Link.

Adobe Dynamic Link allows us to add completed After Effects compositions to Premiere and keep an active link so that we can return to After Effects, make changes, and have those changes reflected when we save and return to Premiere Pro. This is a major advantage of working with Adobe Creative Cloud, and the transitions between programs are very smooth.

There are several ways to activate Adobe Dynamic Link from within any of the Creative Cloud applications. We could even import an entire After Effects project into Premiere Pro, but this generally isn't the most efficient option.

A common workflow is to edit your video in Premiere, and then create the After Effects compositions needed. We can create After Effects compositions from the Premiere project panel, and After Effects will open automatically. This ensures that our compositions will be the correct size, framerate, and length for our video project. We can also open entire Premiere sequences as After Effects compositions, and add effects and animations there.

Today, we have a Premiere project already created with some video and audio imported, and a few of our After Effects compositions already linked. We will open this project, link the remaining compositions that we have created, and make some adjustments to these compositions.

Let's open Adobe Premiere Pro now.

Step 1. Open Premiere Pro.

Adobe Premiere Pro opens. We are presented with the Start screen, which gives us the option to create a new project or open an existing project, among other things.. Let's open our existing project.

Step 3. To open an existing project,

Click

You see the Open dialog box.

We need to specify the name and location of the file to open.

Setting the Location for Opening Your File

When the dialog box opens, it lists a default location from where the file will be opened. All of our exercise files are contained in the AE_Basics folder, located on the desktop. We'll want to change our location to this folder.

Step 1. To move to the desktop,

Click

Step 2. To open the correct folder,

Double Click the AE_Basics folder

Step 3. To open the file,

Double-Click Moving Day Trailer.prproj

Step 4. To convert the project to the latest version of Premiere Pro, if necessary,

Click OK

The project opens:

NOTE: This workshop assumes you understand how to work in Premiere in a basic way. If you are not familiar with the Premiere interface or how to work with it, consider taking the course Premiere Pro: The Basics.

We can see in the Project panel that there are several bins listed already with After Effects compositions, video and audio imported.

Let's import our After Effects compositions now.

Importing After Effects Compositions

When we import a composition from After Effects, we first select the project file, and then are presented with the compositions available to import. Let's use the Adobe Dynamic Link option to import these compostions now.

Step 1. To begin importing compositions, from the menu bar,

Click File, Point Adobe Dynamic Link, Click Import After Effects Composition...

The Import After Effects Composition dialog box appears:

In this dialog, we will need to find our file and then we can choose compositions to import.

Step 2. To find the composition, in the dialog box,

Double-Click AE_Basics, Click Trailer Comps.aep

The list of compositions appears on the right side of the screen. We have already imported several, but let's add the rest that we will need.

Step 3. To add the compositions,

Click On A Distant Planet, press and hold Control key, Click Planet Animation

Step 4. Once we have selected the compositions,

Click

The compositions appear in the projects panel. Let's keep things organized.

Step 5. To organize the Project panel, in the Project panel,

Press & Drag On A Distant Planet and Planet Animation to the Linked After Effects Composition bin

Now our project is organized and we can add these to the timeline.

Adding Compositions to the Timeline

Once the compositions are imported to the project, we can add them to the timeline.

Step 1. To place the first After Effect composition into the timeline, from the Linked After Effects Composition bin on the Project panel,

Press & Drag the On a Distant Planet composition to the beginning of the timeline

NOTE: You may need to expand the Linked After Effects Compositions bin in order to see the list of compositions.

A pink bar representing the video appears on the timeline.

We will now add the remaining pieces one at a time.

Step 2. Use the following table to add compositions to the timeline in this order:

Each new video should be right next to the previous video.

Step 3. To add the background music to the timeline,

Press & Drag background.mp3 from the Audio bin to the Audio 2 track

NOTE: We are using the Audio 2 track since whip pan.mp4 has sound included and is already added to the timeline.

Step 4. To preview the contents of the trailer, on the keyboard, press:

Spacebar

After a moment, the animation plays with sound included.

Step 5. Make any final adjustments to the timing of the animation.

Step 6. Save the file.

We might have noticed that a couple of the animations were fairly bland. This is easy to fix with a linked composition, as we can update it in After Effects, and it will automatically update in Premiere. Let's move to After Effects now.

Step 7. Move to After Effects.

Let's add some additional transitions to the final two compositions on our own.