Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual page 609

About Dynamic Link (Production Premium only)
In the past, sharing media assets among post-production applications has required you to render your work in one
application before importing it into another—an inefficient and time-consuming workflow. If you wanted to make
changes in the original application, you had to rerender the asset. Multiple rendered versions of an asset consume
disk space and can lead to file-management challenges.
Adobe Dynamic Link, a feature of Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium, offers an alternative to this workflow:
the ability to create dynamic links, without rendering, between new or existing compositions in Adobe After Effects
and either Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe Encore. Creating a dynamic link is as simple as importing any other type
of asset, and dynamically linked compositions appear with unique icons and label colors to help you identify them.
Dynamic links are saved as part of the Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore project.
Changes you make to a dynamically linked composition in After Effects appear immediately in the linked files in
Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore; you don't have to render the composition or even save changes first.
When you link to an After Effects composition, it appears in the target component's Project panel. You can use the
linked composition as you would any other asset. When you insert a linked composition into the target component's
timeline, a linked clip, which is simply a reference to the linked composition in the Project panel, appears in the
Timeline panel. After Effects renders the linked composition on a frame-by-frame basis during playback in the target
application.
• In Adobe Premiere Pro, you can preview the linked composition in the Source Monitor, set In and Out points, add
it to a sequence, and use any of the Adobe Premiere Pro tools to edit it. When you add a linked composition that
contains both footage and audio layers to a sequence, Adobe Premiere Pro inserts linked video and audio clips in
the timeline. (You can unlink these to edit them separately; search for "Unlink video and audio" in Adobe
Premiere Pro Help.)
• In Encore, you can use the linked composition to create a motion menu or insert it into a timeline, and use any of
the Adobe Encore tools to edit it. When you add a linked composition that contains both video and audio layers
to an Encore timeline, Encore inserts separate video and audio clips in the timeline.
Other ways to share content among Production Premium components include copying and pasting between After
Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro, exporting After Effects projects to Adobe Premiere Pro, using the Capture In Adobe
Premiere Pro command in After Effects, creating After Effects compositions from Encore menus, or importing Adobe
Premiere Pro projects into After Effects. For more information, see the relevant component's Help.
For a tutorial on Adobe Dynamic Link, see www.adobe.com/go/learn_dv_tutorial_dynlink.
Saving and Dynamic Link (Production Premium only)
You must save your After Effects project at least once before you can create a dynamic link from Adobe Premiere Pro
or Encore to a composition within it. However, you don't have to subsequently save changes to an After Effects
project to see changes to a linked composition in Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore.
If you use the Save As command to copy an After Effects project that contains compositions referenced by Adobe
Dynamic Link, Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore uses the original composition—not the new copy—as its source for
the linked composition. You can relink a composition to the new copy at any time.
Managing performance and Dynamic Link (Production Premium only)
Because a linked composition may reference a complex source composition, actions you perform on a linked compo-
sition may require additional processing time as After Effects applies the actions and makes the final data available
to Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore. In some cases, the additional processing time may delay preview or playback.
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