CS4 & Dynamic Link...
by Cal Johnson
on
Nov 22, 2008 at 12:35:47 am
Hello. I'm wondering if there's anyone out there who is using CS4 and dynamic link on a PC platform successfully. I just received the CS4 Production Suite package, and have tried it on two systems, one of which is well above the requirements as laid out by Adobe.
On both systems, dynamic link is pretty much useless. It won't play back a 360 x 240 composition from After Effects in a Premiere timeline of the same dimensions without rendering a preview first. The preview takes a very long time to render, and its about 4x faster to just fire up AE, render out the comp, and bring it into Premiere Pro.
I'm reading all this stuff about how dynamic link allows you to make changes in AE that are "instantly" updated in Premiere. That's great, but what's the point if I can't preview it in Premiere? And if its taking 4 times as long to render the preview in Premiere than it would if I just rendered out a file from After Effects and then imported it into Premiere, dynamic link really has no value to me. I don't see the time saving aspect.
So if someone out there is able to use CS4 (not CS3) without these issues, I'd really appreciate knowing what kind of system you're using. I spoke with BOXX today, and they claim that their 4800 system will run CS4 at SD seamlessly, but its a lot of bucks to shell out and hope that their comp lives up to expectations.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Vince Becquiot on Nov 23, 2008 at 12:06:16 am
Honestly, Dynamic link is much more useful the other way around. When you are done editing, you export your timeline to AE and you can color correct/composite etc with individual clips. I usually render from AE to Premiere.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Cal Johnson on Nov 23, 2008 at 3:58:28 am
Hmm.. well, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you, at least for our work flow. I find its much more useful to finish in Premiere. This way I can preview the video before its final output. Also, we do lots of audio work that sometimes gets changed at the last minute (client wants a new sound track, etc). What you're describing I would be going from Premiere, into After Effects, and then back into Premiere again... Also, by making your final output in After Effects, you're committing to a full render of the entire project even if there's just one small thing that needs to be changed.
Anyhow, I didn't want to debate the merits of workflows, I'm looking for people who are using dynamic link to bring in After Effects compositions into Premiere with CS4. Adobe touts it as a major feature of the Production Premium package. I believe that in CS3, going from Premiere to After Effects wasn't even an option, but I could be wrong. In any case Vince, the whole point of dynamic link is to avoid rendering from After Effects to go into Premiere, as you describe. Thats a huge feature that Adobe really has emphasized, but its not working at all for me. I just wanted to know if this is a hardware issue, and I need a better graphics card or whatever, or if its just something that doesn't quite work as well as advertised.
Again, I'm not looking to get into a debate. I'm wanting to hear from anyone who has no problem making this feature work, or who it doesn't work for, and they feel its the software so no amount of processing power is going to change things.
It sounds like you're not using dynamic link to bring your After Effects comps into Premiere.... why not? Because you encouter some of the same issues I described?
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Vince Becquiot on Nov 23, 2008 at 4:57:25 am
Agreed, I didn't mean that it wasn't a useful option, just not as practical because of the issues you described.
You also have to look at the reality of things. You can't see things in realtime without rendering in AE either, and that's given the obvious complexities involved in the rendering. If you work in 3D, you will agree that the rendering time is actually pretty darn good compared to 1 frame per minute or far worse
Add to that that Premiere is just an editor, I am actually amazed that it can actually import an AE comp.
Playing the devil's advocate here, but dynamic has come a long way from when it was first introduced, even as close as CS3
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Cal Johnson on Nov 23, 2008 at 5:22:55 am
Vince, we're getting into a debate that I have no interest in. I don't "have to look at the reality of things" at all. Please take a look through Adobe's site, and how they describe dynamic link. Please, before responding again, go take a look. They talk about how dynamic link makes so that you no longer need to render a comp out from After Effects, and then bring it into Premiere. Instead, just use dynamic link to bring the composition straight from AE to PP. Please read my first post more carefully. I'm saying this has no time saving use to me if I can't effectively preview the composition in Premiere. I've tried making a sequence that is half the size, but even that needs a render preview before it can be played back. And that render preview in Premiere is taking 4x as long as it is just to render it AE and bring it in.
You seem to be saying "so what if the software doesn't work like they say it should". I don't care about that. I'm interested in hearing from people who either have it working, or feel it can't work due to the software, and so investing in a hefty computer upgrade isn't going to change things. If you have some insight to that, I'm all ears. If not, sorry, but I'm not interested in the debate. I'm a huge fan of Adobe and their products, this is just an issue that I am trying to clarify, and I'm looking for information in that regard. Please respect my intial post and allow me to ask that question without taking the discussion totally off track.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Vince Becquiot on Nov 23, 2008 at 5:39:49 am
Cal,
I read your post. I'm not trying to debate, nor am I disagreeing with you, but read again.
Adobe uses very careful words, that's called marketing.
And if you read carefully, you will see that they use the expression "eliminate intermediate rendering", meaning in between the 2 applications, which doesn't mean you won't have to render in order to preview the footage.
It is faster in that you don't have to deal with export settings, re-import, etc. You also keep layers intact, which can be a huge time saver going to AE.
It's always been that way, and as far as I understand it, it's the same for CS4.
Is it fair ?
Well they do offer a trial version, so I guess they can claim it is.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Cal Johnson on Nov 23, 2008 at 6:45:02 am
Vince, please, I'm not interested in your interpretations of Adobe's marketing strategy. I'm looking for relevant information from people using Dynamic link in CS4. I've asked with respectfully, and yet you keep trying to get the debate going. If you do not have any practical information, could you please leave me alone and go start your own thread or something? Man, I though the people on Creative Cow weren't into the bravado nonsense.
I'm editing a project right now, and keep getting e-mail alerts, and its just you trying to prove some point, though what it is I don't know. Its very annoying. I will see if I can delete this thread and start over. Would you kindly leave that one alone so I can see if someone actually has some information that will help resolve things? I'd really appreciate it. Really. Thanks for being a respectiful Cow member.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Jon Barrie on Nov 23, 2008 at 10:22:54 am
Hi Cal,
I don't think you want to have a debate about the Dynamic Link feature. But by stating that it doesn't work is fuel for a debate.
I use CS3 and CS4 and have found CS4 to absolutely use Dynamic Link way more effectively.
The new approach to sending selected media to an AE comp that has already the correct format, length and all items at the head of the comp not as far from the beginning as it was in the Premiere Pro timeline position is far faster a process than I could ever get out of CS3.
On my Core2Duo laptop I found the unrendered playback was pretty amazingly good. To render the clips was not such a big deal. The fact that I didn't need to render out a clip and use up HDD space and only needed to render out a final project for client approval/alterations list still means I just jump in and it updates the changes in Preimere Pro instantly. Then I re-export it with the alts, no rendering from AE. That's what the feature claims and it delivers for me exactly what I expected and a little more.
In all the responses you gave after Vince tried to explain his perspective you never mentioned your hardware. If you are running a P4 PC or an iMac then you are probably expecting too much from your hardware.
You need a Core2Duo minimum. Quad would be most beneficial. Now with the i7(Quad Core with HT for 8-Effective calculating cores) you should be laughing. The GFX card makes a difference. Then there's the RAM amount. Are you running Vista Ultimate 64-bit? Are you running with SATA Drives in a RAID config? How far away are your computer's specs from the recommended Adobe system setup?
You never explained the complexity of your AE comp. That's obviously going to create a heap of lag and RAM clogging if it's doing a lot.
If you can advise on the specs you are running we can probably give you the real world feelback you desire.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Dave Friend on Nov 23, 2008 at 2:50:20 pm
Cal,
Adobe does not state that you will get real time playback of AE comps that are dynamically linked to a Pr project. It says only that you won't have to do in intermediate render. You don't - but you will have to do a preview render in Pr. to see the comp in real time. (As you have seen, those often take more time than doing an intermediate render.) You will be able to instantly see the changes you make in AE update in the Pr timeline. Sure, you can SEE them - one frame at at time - but not in real time without rendering.
Your system appears to be functioning properly. It is working - just not the way you were hoping it would.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Tim Kolb on Nov 24, 2008 at 3:02:56 pm
Cal,
What sort of project settings are you running? I suspect that the fact you're bringing in the comp in draft mode may actually be slowing it down a bit as PPro is probably working at full res...thereby the render involves an up-rez for the draft mode comp...
AE comps don't typically play back on a PPro timeline much faster than they would in AE...The idea is to reduce all the redundant media being produced by those "intermediate renders".
Dynamic link has typically been a RAM-intensive operation (not surprisingly) and for those of us running XP with its 2.5 GB RAM recognition ceiling...it's particularly taxing with really elaborate comps.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Mike Chapman on Nov 26, 2008 at 12:58:43 pm
I'm with you, Cal --
I gave up on the whole interop thing pretty quickly after a "finished" sequence we burned to a DVD came up with color bars because the link had somehow broken between AE and Encore.
Adobe marketing is run by clever people and they parse their words very carefully, and they'd have you believe that everything works together seamlessly. And it may do so in their lab while being tested by engineers (nothing wrong with that), but here in the real world it's not quite so pretty, at least in my experience. I too have had problems with the whole interop concept, especially over issues like scaling stills. In CS3 I could scale still shots (like Jpegs) in the timeline if the stills weren't too big (else it would crash the app.) Now I have to export the bloody thing to AE, wait while AE fires up, do my move, wait for the round-trip, and hope the plumbing holds together.
Again - looks great on paper and looks fantastic in the press releases and brochures. But I doubt that anyone at Adobe has ever earned a living as an editor. If so, they would realize that "feature creep" and "design-ship-test" has no business in our business.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by josh townsend on Nov 23, 2008 at 5:12:56 pm
The only difference between CS3 and CS4 is that now you can open a premiere dynamic link in AE and there's also a new dynamic link to Encore.
Also now you can select a single clip or sequence to export to AE (the only great feature about CS4 besides Media Browser).
Being able to open a 'live' premiere clip in AE might have some uses but because AE isn't real-time it's not like it's some amazing new feature.
Sounds like your complaining about not being able to see an after effects comp in real time and the Premiere preview takes longer to render than it would in AE.
That's the way it is. AE will never be real-time once you add effects so don't think just cause you open it up in Premiere it suddenly will.
The feature works best when you don't need to watch the AE 'dynmalinked' because you know your what you did is right(like doing a cc to fix a shot or feature removal).
It may not be real time but it keeps me from having to lose a single generation going between my NLE and the compositor. With out it I most likely woudn't even edit with Premiere.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Cal Johnson on Nov 23, 2008 at 7:03:29 pm
Ok, thanks... those responses are a little more enlightening. First, I didn't mention my computer hardware because I'm not a computer tech. There's not a lot of point in my posting all the specs of my systems when I already know they don't work. What I was looking for was potentially someone to say "we have system "X" and it works just fine.
Just to clarify, a couple of times people have posted "you still have to render a preview". Guys, thanks, I do understand that, and if you read my first post I stated that.
My whole issue is this: You can use dynamic link to bypass the intermediate render and take your clips directly from AE to PP. Sounds great. But at SD 720 x 480 resolution, the computer we had that was well within the specs recommended by Adobe couldn't play back the dynamic link AE composition in Premiere even WITH a rendered preview. It just stuttered through, and actually screwed up the whole timeline.
We were able to render at 360 x 240, but my whole point is that it took soooooo long that it was way faster to render it out from AE, and then just bring it in. It took about 12 minutes to render a 5 second clip that was brought into Premiere via dynamic link.
The whole reason I didn't want to get into workflow debates is because we all have different needs and preferences for how we work. Some people obviously find that having to set all the render & output settings in AE is difficult and time consuming, and therefore view Dynamic Link as a "time saver". I myself setup preset render settings that I just recall with a couple of mouse clicks when I need them, so its not a big deal for me. However, I do at times have the client sit with me and watch the video, and ask for changes. Certainly all of the videos we do are previewed by the client for approval, and often, if not always, changes are asked for.
In this way, with Dynamic Link takiing so long to preview, its just not worth it to us as we use After Effects heavily for most of our projects, and having to wait all that extra time isn't really an option. On one recent project I sat down at my station at 10am, and left at 11am the next morning in order to meet a deadline.
The bottom line is that if you can't actually do even a low resolution preview without a very long wait for it to preview, then there's not much point, at least not to me. I have to be able to see how the compositions sit in the edit, and how it all flows together, and possibly make changes. What it sounds like is the main usefulness of Adobe Link is that once the project is "locked", you could delete all your rendered comps and just replace them with dynamic link, eliminating large files adding up on your hard drive. However, because we have to stay fluid right to up to the end, this has limited usefulness for me.
I'd also like to mention that we went from PP 2.0 to CS4, so we haven't used CS3 as I think someone assumed.
I think I've got my answer, thanks for the replies. It sounds like everyone is saying, Dynamic Link will work, but yes, the time required to generate a preview in Premiere Pro will be much longer than if you just rendered it from AE and imported into the project.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Robert Smyth on Nov 23, 2008 at 8:49:03 pm
He's right. You guys all using CS4? I upgraded and now dynamic blows. No more preview without rendering, and render times are so long its just not worth it. Feels more like beta to me. Back to CS3 until Adobe unkinks this thing.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Tam Perl on Nov 27, 2008 at 12:09:06 am
When a company such as Adobe goes public with a product, you expect it to perform. The advertising, the website, the general hype at all the demos (if any of you go to user group meetings) --- everything about CS4 has been "sold" to us as a product that does x,y, and z. The fact of the matter is, it does NOT do the things it was cracked up to do. I'm not talking about some speed loss. I'm reading all over the forums about apps crashing, sticking, hanging, output coming out pixelated, and a general bugginess -- and there are a lot of unhappy people out there. And the reason I'm looking at forums, is that we are experiencing all these symptoms on 3 separate Macs. We upgraded from CS3 -- where we had zero problems. The same footage, the same effects, the same everything, does not work on CS4.
Now don't tell me about Adobe's careful wording and marketing, and license agreements which seem to absolve them of everything. We are not beta testers. There are a whole lot of professionals out here who make our living using Adobe products, and we rely on the company to deliver a working product. We rely on the demos and the claims made by the company. Because every feature that doesn't work, and every bug, costs us in time, money, and aggravation. And I'm starting to sense a grass-roots movement of people who have just had enough.
And my question here is -- what do we need to do to make Adobe aware, of just how desperately they need to allocate every possible resource, to fixing these problems NOW, and not in next year's CS5 upgrade?
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Alex Udell on Nov 27, 2008 at 3:08:21 pm
Hi Tam...
I agree, software companies should not make its PAYING customers Beta testers. They either need to scale back release feature sets to more comfortably fit the realistic deadlines that the market and their stock holders demand, adjust the release cycles to to fit feature sets, or hire more coders and testers to meet the exiting time frame and feature sets.
All that being said....as a rule of thumb, I always suggest that people not buy a "dot zero release." This rarely seems to go smoothly. It is tempting however, because manufacturers offer such great incentives to upgrade when the new version is released. Maybe a buy and hold policy might work. Buy the upgrade to take advantage of the pricing, but hold it until the first couple point releases, then if possible, do a gradual deployment, so it can be tested within the work flow for potential work stoppages.
I feel you frustration, and am not excusing anything. Just making some suggestions for how to deal with it on you end.
Best of luck,
Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
Younversity TV
www.youniversity.tv
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Cal Johnson on Nov 27, 2008 at 6:15:55 pm
Well this thread seems to be opening a big can of worms, and I thank everyone for their input. Jon, I may have mis-stated my computer situtation. BOTH systems were within the specs recommened by Adobe. One was very close to what you stated, having everything but the new i7 chip, whatever that means! I'm really sorry, I'm not a tech guy, but I did pass on your recommondations to my wife who is way better with computer hardware than I am.
Here's something though. Since posting I have been able to see CS3 and CS4 in a back to back test on the same machine (my wife's work has CS3). The Dynamic Link feature I originally asked about worked perfect with CS3. Not only were the rendering times way faster, I didn't even have to render to preview the After Effects composition that was brought into Premiere. It played well enough in Premiere without generating a render preview, and when I did do a render preview or output, the time was way faster than CS4.
Keep in mind that this is working with exactly the same file, the composition at the same resolution in both cases (setting the composition resolution to half or full in AE made no difference for helping CS4 render times, as someone suggested.)
The way Dynamic Link works in CS3 has tremendous value to me. I can now skip the render process in AE and take the comp straight into my timeline in Premiere. It also allows me to update AE comps and have them update in Premiere without re-rendering an intermediate compostion.
Dave, I agree with Tam and Mike. I shouldn't have to be thinking like a lawyer and trying to find the pitfalls or loop holes in Adobe's marketing. Tam is absolutely spot on. I ask you this then: if you can bring in an AE comp into Premiere, but you can't preview it, it will take you forever to render it, then where is the VALUE in it? How does that serve an editor? And yes, I say "cannot preview". We tried the 720x480 comp on CS4, and it took forever to render the "preview". But once it was done, it wouldn't play back any part of the timeline, just freeze frame and the audio continues. CS3, no problem. Previewed without render, rendered a preview quickly, played back without issue.
I think a number of people assumed I'm coming from CS3; I'm not. This was my first round with the full Adobe Production suite. Also, I really didn't start this as an Adobe lynching thread... I just wondered what I needed to get CS4 working properly. However, last night despite my other woes with CS4 I output a couple of renders anyways and got the same problem Tam is talking about.. its all pixelated and this is on highest quality. Its clear to me that CS4 has some real issues.
We're sending the software back. My wife's work spent $30,000 dollars last time round with CS3 licensing and after talking to her (she found issues with CS4 Photohop) they are not going to go near CS4.
Alex, I don't believe the CS series has been offered in anything but "dot zero" editions, has it? Maybe I'm wrong. In any case, I totally agree with Tam and Mike. If you're going to pay $1700 for software, you need it to work. No excuses. I've defended Adobe Premiere many times. I've taught basic editing classes at our public access TV station with Final Cut, and everyone loves to beat up on Premiere. I tell them that editing software all tends to do the same thing, and not to get too caught up on one program or another. I'm not trying to bash Adobe, I'm just really dissapointed.
Thanks again for everyone's input. If CS4 is rocking for you without issue, please, by all means spill your guts and tell us poor slobs exactly what system you have to make it work like CS3 did!
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Sean Tatalovich on Feb 25, 2009 at 1:58:48 am
Regarding Dynamic Link by creating a comp in AE and sending to Premiere as a D. Link will the preview rendering affect my quality? No right? And vice versa if I take a sequence in Premiere to AE and back no loss of quality right?
At work we have CS4 and FCP 6 and I am trying to decide which I want to use. I am familiar with both. Not an expert. Going between edit programs and AE is a big deal to me.
Curious can I copy and paste clips from Premiere to AE or vice versa?
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Nicholas Shera on Mar 20, 2009 at 2:19:44 pm
Yes, you can certainly copy and paste clips between AE and Premiere. You can also import an entire Premiere Pro project into an After Effects project. Of course this method does not use dynamic link.
Re: CS4 & Dynamic Link... by Nicholas Shera on Mar 21, 2009 at 12:23:35 am
You treat Premiere projects that you have imported into After Effects (or copied and pasted) just as you would any other After Effects composition. In other words, there is NO deterioration in quality, because no intermediate rendering takes place.
