Problems Batch Relinking MXF files in After Effects that were sent from Premiere Pro using Adobe Dynamic Link

So I am working multiple projects right now, primarily on a single machine, but had to render out some 30 minute very complicated projects in Adobe Media Encorder, and I have found it is very unstable with the long complicated projects, so we copied the media to an alternate drive and I moved to another machine. Premiere Pro easily relinked my whole project in a few seconds, but with after effects it was not so easy.

I had quite a few After Effects compositions that I had sent from Premiere Pro, and the problem arose from the fact that the media are MXF files from a P2 card. Normally in after effects if you replace a single file with it’s original file, it looks and relinks all the files it can in that same structure, but this does not work with MXF files.

MXF files that were imported using Adobe Dynamic Link from Premiere pro show up without their extension in After Effects, while the actual files have the .mxf extension. If you import the same files normally in After Effects they show up fine with extension, so this is a Dynamic Link issue. And the problem is that when you replace a file with it’s correct original, it does not see the other files as the correct file because they don’t have the correct extension in After Effects.

These are the MXF files after relinking.

This means that you have to manually relink the files in After Effects one at a time, which is a major time waster. I am pretty sure that this is an Adobe Dynamic Link issue, so I have reported this to adobe and hope that someday they fix this bug (you can report bugs and features requests to Adobe here).

Of course this wasn’t my only issue, as when I brought the project back to the original system after using File Synchronization to bring the projects back to the original issue, the Premiere Pro project got messed up. The timeline is completely screwed up and doesn’t show correctly.

Here is the messed up version, and zooming, scrolling or anything doesn’t help.
Here is what the sequence should look like.

Now I was able to work around this, by opening the earlier project in Premiere and using the Media Browser to import the new sequence into Premiere Pro. The cool part is that it also imported all the new files that I had imported into the proper places within the project. They were offline, but it was easy enough to relink the files. Still not sure what happened here, but it is furstrating!

Macnn Feature Thief article on Final Cut Pro, iMovie and iDVD

William Gallagher and Charles Martin have an interesting article on Apple and it’s changes to it’s video lineup. It goes into iMovie, Final Cut Pro and iDVD, and how Apple upgraded the first 2 with less features, but slowly made better versions.

My biggest complaint with the article would be on who they polled as they say that most of the people who were angry over Apple’s switch from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X have moved back X (with a cursory mention of Premiere Pro as an alternative).

Personally being a professional editor, I did give the initial Final Cut Pro X a try, and hated it. And got a refund and have not gone back. There are some features that I do really like in X (especially it’s handling of Meta Data), but since I edit complicated graphics heavy shows, it is the timeline that is the deal breaker for me, and it is the fundamental feature of X, so no matter how many updates they do, the timeline is too unorganized and broken for it to make sense for a 15 track highly organized video project.

And of all the editors that I know, I have only heard of one that has gone back to X and really likes it now. And while features are starting to make their move to Premiere Pro, there have only been a few instances I have heard of big houses moving to X. Most of the big houses I know that were basically all Final Cut Pro have moved to AVID at the studios insistence (kick backs?!??!), while most commercial houses have moved to Premiere Pro for it’s fidelity with graphics.

I just don’t see Final Cut Pro X as a viable solution, and with Apple’s history of dropping software, I don’t trust Apple to keep it going anyway!

Adobe considering buying The Foundry

The telegraph is reporting that Adobe is considering buying The Foundry. It seems The Foundry’s private equity owners have put it up for sale, and Adobe might be interested.

Now this will likely scare some of the high end users of the Foundry‘s software, but seems like a perfect fit for Adobe who would like to get into the high end of film compositing. as well as 3D. And the foundry has the high end node based compositor Nuke, Modo for 3D sculpting, Mari for 3D painting as well as powerful Plug Ins including a 3D Camera Tracker, Keylight for Green Screen keying, Kronos for CUDA accelerated After Effects retiming and Motion blur and Furnace for 2D problem solving in Nuke. Of course they also have Ocula for 3D imagery in Nuke, and Katana for relighting shots, as well as Flix for Visual Story Development, and Colorway for Design colaboration and Heiro for shot management, conform and review, which would likely just be rolled into Adobe Dyanmic Link.

And it would be just awesome to have all or most of this rolled into your Creative Cloud subscription, and hopefully Adobe would keep developing all these applications and not just do Dynamic Link enhancements (which they seem to have done with SpeedGrade, worrying more about putting the tech into Premiere than enhancing the original app when it really needs some upgrades).

Of course Linux users will likely be worried, as most Nuke users run on Linux, and Adobe has only ever released one version of Photoshop for Linux, and then killed it.

Still I would be much happier with this, than say Apple’s purchase of Shake, which while it did drop the price, really just ended with them stealing some tech and killing the program.

And with Black Magic making Fusion so cheap or even free for most users, The Foundry really needs to compete with Nuke, so this would likely do it.

Adobe teases the next version of SpeedGrade and the new Project Candy

At it’s Moving Colors blog, adobe has teased the next version of Adobe SpeedGrade. Unfortunately it doesn’t really go into the program itself, just going into it’s integration with Adobe Premiere Pro. I was really hoping for multi-monitor support, as I find it the biggest problem of SpeedGrade. I want to be able to put my scopes huge on a second monitor so I can see them!

Anyway, here are the features that they list, and the videos which I have already shown in the Premiere Pro post.

•The Lumetri Panel in Premiere Pro.

•Curves, Hue and Saturation in Premiere Pro

•Lumetri 3 Way Color Corrector in Premiere Pro

•Taking it SpeedGrade, your Lumetri color correct in Premiere Pro shows as a single Lumetri Color Layer in SpeedGrade.

•Introducting Project Candy. This is a new app for your phone that lets you take a photo and color match it in 3D color space and save it to your Creative Cloud library and apply it in Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop or SpeedGrade. To me it doesn’t seem all new, but an update the existing iOS Adobe Color App that would let you take photos to make color swatches. The funny part is while I think it is a cool idea, I would rather have the tech built into After Effects or Premiere, so I could do this with a photo on the computer, as I am much more likely to find a reference image that I want to use instead of a photo I am going to take with my phone.

Adobe teases the next version of Adobe Audition

Adobe has teased the next version of Audition at it’s Adobe Audition blog.

Here is a quick breakdown of the new features revealed.

•Dynamic Link Streaming to play back Premiere Pro sequences directly.

•Full Screen Mirror Video Display on a second monitor.

•Relink Media

•Automatic Session File Backup

•Copy Imported Assets to Session Folder

•Schedule Recording

•Custom Level Meters Crossover Values

•Import/Export Markers

•Brazilian Portuguese Language Support

•Audio Driver Performance and Stability Updates

This is a program I need to delve into more, but really I hope to pass my audio on to a real mixer, so it has never been as important to me.

Adobe teases the next release of After Effects

Todd Kopriva at his AfterEffects blog has teased the next version of After Effects to be shown at NAB next week.

Here is a quick breakdown of the new features.

•Creative Cloud libraries to share graphics and looks between Premiere, Photoshop and Illustrator.

•Greater Interactive Performance thanks to a new architecture. Let’s hope it doesn’t break all current plug ins!

•Unified and Simplified previews.

•A preview of Adobe Character Animator.

•Face Tracker Effect.

Yes this all sounds pretty exciting, though the character animator seems pretty niche.

Adobe Reveals the next release of Premiere Pro

Adobe has revealed some features from it’s next version of Creative Cloud at it’s PremierePro blog.

Here is a quick breakdown.

•Lumetri Color Panel. Adobe has integrated more of the color engine of SpeedGrade directly in Premiere Pro, but with simpler to use controls for editors, but all grades will easily pass over to SpeedGrade. Now you get SpeedGrades videoscopes, and controls simplified to work like Lightroom as well as a new Lumetri 3 Way Color Corrector.

 The Lumetri Control Panel

New Curve and Hue/Saturation Controls
New Lumetri 3 Way Color Corrector

•Morph Cut allows you to seamlessly morph between to edits in a talking head interview to make it look like a single cut (kind of scary, but also an incredible tool if it works as described).

•CC Libraries have been integrated into Premiere Pro and After Effects so you can save looks and graphics wherever you are logged into Creative Cloud.

•Premiere Clip, Adobe’s portable editing solution has an upgraded workflow.

•Task Oriented Workspaces for editing, coloring, audio work or other needs (much like AVID’s similar functions).

•New formats including ProRes 4444XQ Avid DNxHR, Canon XF-AVC and Panasonic 4K_HS.

•Closed Caption Support

•Composite Previews during trim

•Simpler Keyboard numerical import

•Source Settings as Master Clip Effects

•Improved AAF Exports

•Improved Audio Routing

•Improved Audition workflow, where audition will play the video directly from your media instead of rendering a video of your video.

•Improved Mercury Transmit Performance

•Time Tuner in Premiere and Media Encoder to allow you to retime a show up to 5% easily and possibly up to 10% in either direction without losing quality.

Sounds impressive. I am looking forward to getting my hands on it!