I cut together a short film in premiere that is ready for color grading. There are multiple 3-4 second shots in this 2 minute film. What is the best way to color grade them all in after effects?. I tried dynamic link but that doesn't work because I have fades and have slowed down footage in premiere that does not show up in after effects and those edits don't show up once its imported back into premiere. Also many shots need different degrees of grading so I cannot render the whole thing and grade it. I know I can import the after effects project and all the clips will end up on different layers, but Is it possible to then grade them and render each shot out as an individual file to be overlayed back in premiere instead of it being 1 large render file?. How do people do this? Maybe I am missing something. I'd love for some help wether its using dynamic link or not. Thanks
Locked edit with many cuts, want to color grade in after effects?
- Thread starter fixxxer76
- Start date
Jordan Scott Price
Veteran
The import prproj. to AE idea is viable. You can set your work area for a particular clip after you grade it and then export it as its own clip, bringing it back in Premiere on top of the ungraded clip. Perfectly workable solution.
I thought about that, but lets say i have 30 seperate clips , I know I can import them all into an after effects project and quickly grade all the layers. But is there a way to render each of those layers out individually? So i can go back use the graded clips to replace the ungraded ones in premiere. I can only figure out how to render the whole project as 1 file which is not what i want to do.
If you right-click on a clip in PPro, it will give you a menu to "open as an AE comp." You can then color-grade in AE and the clip will automatically show up in Premiere as the graded clip. You could do this for each of your clips. BTW, do this on a copy of your PPro timeline, as the linking to AE can NOT be un-done.
Jim
Jim
Thanks for the replies! I guess what I dont understand is , is this not standard practice? What is the standard way of shooting a scene with multiple clips and then color grading them to be used in premiere to do things like fades ,etc?? Is it common to render out entire sequences with multiple clips and then color grade the one long sequence instead of each shot individually?
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
For those films that I've done, where 'grading' has been really required, I've graded on the individual clips. For a fully rendered film, getting the 'grade' on specific cuts would be tedious, and if there are any transitions between cuts, those would not be graded correctly.
If there are a large number of cuts... well... large amount of work...
The only exception would be if one wanted to give an overall cast or look, and there was no consideration for variations between the edited clips...
I have found that it is easiest when doing basic color work to simply use an adjustment layer in premiere and then using looks, mojo etc directly in premiere. Don't see the fuss of exporting , losing all my transitions etc, re rendering , then replacing footage back in premiere. Am I wrong?
No.
Jordan Scott Price
Veteran
To render out individual clips from AE, set your work area to the beginning and end of the clip you want to render. http://www.ehow.com/video_4445904_setting-work-area-after-effects.html
Them hit Ctrl-M or Command-M and export.
And, no, it really is not standard practice to color grade any project longer than a couple minutes by opening the Premiere project in AE and then exporting single clips. You can rightclick a clip in the timeline in Premiere and hit "Replace with After Effects Comp," like others have said, which will create a comp for that clip in AE and dynamically link your changes in AE to the clip in Premiere, but that can be very taxing on your system if you need real-time playback.
For longer form projects (3+ minutes), before Speedgrade, I used Apple Color to grade (which I hate, but it was the only tool at my disposal). If editing in Premiere, I'd export an XML from Premiere, open it in Color, grade and render, export an XML from Color, and import that XML into Premiere. (It's important that you are 100% picture locked before you do this, as Color only renders out graded clips of the exact edit from the Premiere XML.) Then I would master in Premiere, taking full advantage of the 64-bit power of Media Encoder - and any other dynamic linking I was doing from AE.
XML is a universally accepted interchange format for working from one software to the next. After Effects is really not a color correction software. (That's why we have Speedgrade, hooray!) It's an effects/motion graphics 2.5D software, but I and plenty of others do use it for basic color correction, especially when dynamic linking is an option. In fact, this is my standard workflow at work because we are still running CS5.5 (no Speedgrade) - and our clients want to be able to make changes to the edit while we are playing back in Premiere, where there are dynamically linked comps in the timeline.
I hope that makes sense. Keep asking questions until you get your answer.
bruceallen
Well-known member
Well, it's common, but it's stupid - because when your edit changes, you're hosed.
Standard practice is to use a real grading program like DaVinci Resolve.
A few years ago, when Resolve was super expensive instead of FREE, it made a sense to use After Effects for this, sure. But that was mainly due to lack of options!
Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
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