After Effects render & replace in Premiere Pro

Hey there, in this video I'm going to show you some of the tricks of working with After Effects. We're going to bring in an After Effects file, I'll show you some of the tips and tricks of importing, and then how to work with it when it's on the Timeline, specifically something called Render and Replace, and yeah, let's do that. All right, let's jump in. 

So working with After Effects files is pretty easy, there are a few little tricks to make us better Premiere Pro, After Effects users. I've got a file to bring in, so normally you do your 'Project file', you go 'File', 'Import' and you bring in 'Logo Reveal'. So it's in your 'Co Working' folder, it's an After Effects project, it's called 'Logo Reveal', bring that in.

This isn't the bad way but it's not the most optimal way. So what it's doing is, it's looking at the After Effects files, and seeing if there's more than one composition. In After Effects, if you don't use it very much, a composition is what we in Premiere world call a sequence. So there's two sequences to pick from, which one? I have no idea, and if you're like me, and use After Effects a bit, you never name your comps, you should, but you don't. 

So it's better to use - I canceled that, by the way - is to use our Media Browser to explore After Effects files, because it allows us to preview them before we bring them in, otherwise we have to like import them, see where they are, import them, see what they are, whereas Media Browser, which is, remember, 'Window', down to 'Media Browser', and I'm going to go to-- I've got a shortcut set up for my Exercise Files already, if you don't, go to 'Home' directory and dig it out, right click it, set our favorite for the Exercise Files. I've already done mine. 

So in here you need to be, actually, you don't need to be, you can be in List view or Thumbnail view. Weird thing with After Effects files, even in Thumbnail view, you don't get an instant preview. So 'Exercise Files', I'm on 'Thumbnail' view, I'm going to go into 'Co Working' folder, and I'm going to find the Ae. So that's my After Effects file, there's no like, a little preview here in Thumbnail, which I'm, I don't know, I think there should be, but the problem is, there's more than one comp in here. So it doesn't know which one to preview, so maybe that's it. 

So you can though double click it to go in, and you can actually go inside the After Effects folder, it does take a little bit of time, give it-- the Dynamic Link Server, just briefly, the Dynamic Link Server is just a way of connecting files dynamically, from After Effects to Premiere, and it just means, when you update After Effects files, they update instantly in Premiere Pro, which is really nice. It actually opens up the After Effects file and says, do you want Comp 1 or Comp 2, and you're like, "These thumbnails aren't helping," but you can double click them, and they're not imported yet, but you can preview them up here, and kind of work your way through which one you want. 

In my case I've got two kind of like logo stings, for the beginning of our little project here. I'm going to open up the second one, so one's purple, and for some reason, this morning, doesn't always do this, and if I double click the first one, can you see, it says Comp 1, if I double click the second one, it still says Comp 1. Let me know in the comments whether yours is fixed or not, I'd be interested to know whether, yeah, mine's broken, everyone's broken. 

The way to get around this is to close-- so hit the little lines there and then open the second one, and you can see, this is the second one, just a different color way. It might be completely different project, or a different composition that's inside After Effects, and you can work your way through them. So we can bring it straight from the Media browser, so that's not imported, because we're using the Media browser, we can import it by dragging it into the project, or just drag it straight into the Comp. Who remembers what I can hold down, to kind of push all this along, you remember, 'Command' on a Mac, 'Ctrl' on a PC. I'm going to put it there and it just pushes it all along, Ripple Insert is what I want to say, whatever that is, pushing it all along thing. 

My problem is, I've still got my in and out points over here, so it's jumping out there. Let's clear the in and out points, and now let's talk about some of the things you can do. So obviously, inserting After Effects is pretty easy, Media Browser is a little bit extra handy, and what we're going to do is, I'm going to set it to 'Full', mine's playing back okay. So often, After Effects compositions won't, I try to add some Motion Blur and stuff to it, to make it stress the computer out, but it's actually doing just fine. 

So what we-- let's imagine that it's running really slowly, we know that we can render in and out, so 'I', 'O', hit 'Enter' on my keyboard, and we'll render this little chunk, and work fine. The trouble with it though is, if I end up moving it and using it somewhere else, you can see it's gone red, if I start adjusting it, it kind of, for something like this, because I've done it in After Effects, it's done, like I don't need this to not be done, like to change it anymore. I need it to be finished, it's something that I use on say loads of projects, it might be social media kind of, like call outs, or it might be, say the end of your video, some sort of kind of trailer, or maybe it's like the YouTube "What next" kind of brackets, and kind of, you know, "What to view next," and click on the channel and buy merch type of thing. 

It's something you've made in After Effects, and you don't need to redo it all the time, or have it rendered every time. So what you do is you do something called-- so we don't need in and out, and all we do is, up here, with it selected, we go to our 'Sequence', and we've used Render In and Out just then, this one here, it's called Render, no, it's called Render and Replace, where is it? It's not up there at all, you right click it down here, and say 'Render and Replace'. 

So this is different from the other ones, the other ones were like temporary files created, and this one does a similar job, but kind of more like proxies. It's kind of somewhere in between, so what it's going to do is, it's going to render it, and actually make a new video, but it's not making like a temporary proxy video, it's actually the finished version. So make sure that you are on your 'Sequence Settings', sequence settings, this is all kind of how you want it to be when it exports. It's the right size, Frame Rate's perfect, because that's going to use that, to create a replacement for this, and slightly different from proxies. 

It's actually the thing that's going to go out, it's like a replacement for it, never to be switched out again, does that kind of make sense? Render and Replace, just do it. Pick a format, I'm going to use QuickTime, this, these presets will change, depending on your sequence settings. So find something that you want to work with, in my case, you know, something like this, Match Source ProRes 422, it's going to be perfect, or that one there, because I know, it's 25 frames per second, in HD, let's hit--

It's going to go, it's going to create a new file, next to my original one, I'm going to-- you can include video effects, so if we've added noise or something else to it, it will smoosh them together. I don't have anything else applied to it, let's click 'OK'. Now what happens is, this file is actually not the After Effects file anymore, can you see, the red bar or the green bars are gone, because it's actually just plain old mov now, sitting in my hard drive, let's have a look. 

So this was the Logo Reveal that I had, that I imported into After Effects. It's not using that anymore, it's using this new file with a great name, Com2 Logo Reveal_blah blah Rendered.mov So it's used that now, and switched it out, so you could go through and delete this now. You don't want to obviously, but you can. I'm trying to make a point here, I guess, so yeah, it's just using that file now, and you can copy it and paste it, and make sure it goes onto the right track, with your track targeting, but it's just a file you can use, because yeah, let's say you, you're not going to reuse, just use it as is, it doesn't need to be changed, if you do need to change it. 

Other thing is that, it's actually imported into your project as well, there it is there, it's this second mov, not the After Effects file. So if you do later on though need to change it, you need to unpick that, you can right click it and say 'Restore Unrendered', to go back to that kind of After Effects version of it. So notice that, here's my mov, there's the After Effects file that I've imported, if I hit 'Restore Unrendered', watch that project file, can you see, that actual file disappeared. So it went back, it's now using this, and it needs to be rendered again. It might run slowly, but you can make changes to it if you need to. 

Cool, so when you are using After Effects files, it's going to stretch this machine out pretty heavily, so just Render and Replace, you can go back afterwards, if you're doing lots of changes to your After Effects files, probably just use your normal Render Effects In to Out, just to make it run fast, but if you're doing lots of changes, it's going to have to update all the time, but there's lots of times where After Effects, you know, the "Like" and "Subscribe" little thing that appears, you need that, just not be this crazy bit of animation, that slows down your machine. It's the same every month, or week, or day, whatever your process is. 

A couple things also to note, when you are using that Render and Replace, is that-- a few things won't be included, in that Render and Replace, that you can do afterwards. So in terms of say a Fade In, so I've got my opacity rubber band showing, so opacity showing there, Command or Ctrl click, to add a couple of points, so that won't be included, if you rendered that in and out. So Restore Unrendered, and I go and render that now. That opacity is not like part of it, not baked in, it's something over the top of the original file. Same with, say like an effect.

So if I go to 'Effects', and I go 'Transitions', and I use 'Dissolve', and I go 'Cross Dissolve', in social media, that's okay. This isn't baked into it as well, like, see this kind of like half and half. Other things that aren't baked in, any Time Remapping, so if I use the 'R' key for Rate Stretch, if I make that heaps faster, and I go into, and say, 'Render and Replace', that's not like baked into it, it's an effect applied after. I can still render it, Render and Replace, but it won't include that, even if I include video effects, it won't bake in Opacity, it won't bake in Transitions, and it won't bake in Right Stretch, it will bake in, if I go and add something like noise. I'm not sure why I always go back to noise, but hey, Noise & Grain, if I add that now and start cranking it up, cranking it up, and then I go and say, 'Render and Replace', and I tick that box on, that will be part of that original file. 

Let's have a look at it in our project file. So that one there, is it? Double click it, can you see, it's all part of it now, but the Opacity Fade In isn't. All right, that is it, that is working with After Effects. Let's look at going the other way around, let's stick stuff into After Effects from Premiere Pro.