Common Adobe CS workflow?

[-Tom-]

I havent really thought about this until I got a fairly chunky amount of footage to edit few weeks ago.

So, for example, lets say we have few hours of footage, with few hours of audio being recorded outside the camera (Zoom or similar). Whats the most common (fastest?) workflow if one wants to:

- color correct (balace the look on all the clips you end up using from the footage)
- color grade
- throw in scenes with some effects (AE...I know its easy with Dynamic Link, but how to do it (or how did they do it) without it? Render from AE, doesnt that take away from the IQ?)
- noise removal
- fitting the recorded audio to the final edited clip (I suppose there is no other way but to import the entire audio file into the Premiere and then manually look for where to cut? )

[Jim Simon]

1. Import all media.
2. Merge the video clips with their associated audio file.
3. Edit
4. Add effects.
5. CC/Grade.
6. Export.

[Fresno Bob]

- fitting the recorded audio to the final edited clip (I suppose there is no other way but to import the entire audio file into the Premiere and then manually look for where to cut? )

pluraleyes

[goodgoings]

I have heard people color grade in AE instead of Premiere Pro using CS6. Can someone tell me what the benefits are?

[Jim Simon]

I'm not convinced there are any. With the built-in tools, Colorista II and Adjustment Layers, I'd venture to say you can get the results you need right in PP.

[dregenthal]

I have heard people color grade in AE instead of Premiere Pro using CS6. Can someone tell me what the benefits are?

I pretty much agree with what Jim said . . . If I shot it the way I want it to look I'll get what I want in Premiere.
But, If I have a problem clip or difficulty matching something then I take that (or those) clips into AE . . .
All you have to do is right click on the offending clip on the timeline and send it to AE, make your adjustments and it will "round trip" back into Premiere nicely.

[Martti Ekstrand]

I have heard people color grade in AE instead of Premiere Pro using CS6. Can someone tell me what the benefits are?

Mainly handcrafted roto-masks for super precise secondary colour corrections. I do it a lot on 30 second commercials, very seldom on 30 minute PBS-style docs.

[Bruce Watson]

I have heard people color grade in AE instead of Premiere Pro using CS6. Can someone tell me what the benefits are?

For most things the benefits of color grading in AE are negative. You can do good basic color grades with just the tools in PPro. If you need more than that, there are plugins for PPro from companies like Synthetic Aperture (Color Finesse 3). If you need more than that, you might want to consider a serious grade package like DaVinci Resolve.

The reason not to grade in AE is performance. Not necessarily of grading, but of anything that happens after, like exporting. If PPro and AE both have to touch every frame, AE serializes the process. So your expensive eight cpu editing machine gets used as just a single CPU for your export. Which is silly and, well, in IMHO (after 25 years of real-time and performance oriented software enginnering) just bad software design. I've yet to get a good explanation of this from Adobe, or even an acknowledgement of the problem, but there are a number of threads on the 'net about this. Here's just one.

If you're doing a 30 second commercial and your export takes a few extra minutes, no biggie. But if you're doing an hour and a half documentary and your export takes a few days... I'm just sayin'.