Transitions in Premiere Pro CC 2015 with After Effects Sequence

Question

I have two clips in Premiere, to which I want to add a black fade transition. So far that works without a problem.

But when I replace the clips with After Effects compositions (because I want to add some effects on the clips, like Twixtor) and then try to add a black fade transition between those clips (now AE compositions), it doesn't work.

Premiere tells me there are not enough frames for the transition, altough the clips are still the exact length, but only AE compositions...

What is the right workflow for doing stuff like this, so I will still be able to add transitions over the clips when they come back from After Effects?

Answer 1

Often (and perhaps in your case) what is happening is the following. Initially you have a clip that has plenty of content before or after your transition point. You trim that clip to represent the content you actually care about. If you do a fade at this point, the fade is going to use frames from the trimmed part of the clip that you don't necessarily see, but which are there (and which are used to complete the fade). Now, if you send your trimmed clip through some external process, it doesn't send the /whole/ clip to the external process, just the frames you "see". That clip that seems properly trimmed doesn't actually have the frames to allow the fade to complete the way you want it to.

To fix this, send a longer trim of the clip to AE, then, when it comes back, re-trim it to what you want. You should find the fade working as well as it did for you initially.

Answer 2

I usually use "Render and Replace" for things like this. The whole dynamic link integration is great and works wonders, but it isn't perfect. There are lots of caveats, such as specific plugins that won't work 100%. So I've adopted render and replace as my go-to resource whenever I use AE comps. It's basically:

• insert the comp on premiere
• make a copy of it to a video track below
• right the comp on the top video track
• pick "render and replace"

That will create a mov file that is much better for Premiere to work on. In case you change the AE comp, you have to re-do this, but so far I've found that doing this has been faster then trying to solve the many little problems that come up with some more complex compositions.

Hope it helps.