Adobe’s Dynamic Link technology is one of the most exciting features of it’s Creative Cloud suite, with the ability to link to projects instead of having to render out movies. You can have an After Effects project within premiere and make changes and they dynamically update. Or you can use Media Encoder to render directly from project files. Or directly have Premiere Pro sequences within Encore. And I was even more excited when they hired and Put Wes Plate, the creator of Automatic Duck in charge of it.

The problem is that it does not always work well. With After Effects sequences within Premiere, many times they won’t link unless you already have the After Effects project open when you open the Premiere Pro sequence. This is usually simple enough to deal with, though does not always work, and gets even more complicated when you have things from multiple After Effects projects.

Really the coolest use of it is to select a sequence of clips in a Premiere Pro Timeline and send them into After Effects, though I don’t like how it handles it in Premiere. Your clips are immediately replaced with and After Effects sequence, losing the original clips, so you must first either duplicate the timeline or the clips, personally I wish there was a way to have it turn off the clips and lay the After Effects project on a layer above the clips in premiere, but for now that is nitpicking.

My big problem right now is with Adobe Encore. And it likely has something to do with it being End of Lifed by Adobe (yes Adobe I know most people just download clips now, but some of us still need to make discs, and a new more compatible version with CC would really help). I created a DVD of my editing and graphics reels to send out, and made a nice little menu for it, but I linked to the sequences using dynamic link, and now the project just won’t open anymore. Yes I can build it again, but I had nice looking menus all done, and it is a pain to have to make this again!

I wouldn’t be surprised at some point if Adobe creates some sort of Adobe Dynamic Link Server that runs in the background, and can keep the linking working without having to have all the apps open. but I have a feeling even if that happens Encore will be SOL on that one.

I know Dynamic Link is a complicated thing, but I just wish it worked better all the way around.