Adobe AFTER EFFECTS 5.5 Help Manual page 37

Adobe After Effects Help
Using Help | Contents
Importing an After Effects project
You can import one After Effects project into another. Everything from the imported
project, including footage files, compositions, and folders, appears inside a new folder in
the current Project window. When you want to repeat a complicated mask, effect, or
animation in a different project, you can import the project containing the effect and
simply replace the source footage, keeping all the effect, composition, and layer settings
intact.
See "Importing files into a project" on page 28 for the procedure for importing.
Importing After Effects projects from different platforms
You can open and import an After Effects project from a different operating system as
long as you maintain the filenames, folder names, and either full paths or relative paths
(folder locations) for all files in the project. To maintain relative paths, the source footage
must reside on the same volume as the project file.
If a file format is not supported on the operating system you are using, if the file is missing,
or if the reference link is broken, After Effects substitutes a placeholder item containing
color bars. You can reconnect the placeholder to the appropriate file. You can use the same
process to connect a footage item in the Project window to a different source file.
To relink a reference:
1 Select the placeholder or footage file in the Project window, and choose File > Replace
Footage > File.
2 In the Replace Footage File dialog box, locate and select the footage file you want to
use.
Note: You can also open this dialog box by double-clicking the footage item.
For more information on substituting footage, see "Replacing and substituting footage"
on page 52.
For information about creating projects for both Windows and Mac OS, see "Consider-
ations for cross-platform projects" on page 7.
Importing Adobe Premiere projects
The ability to import Adobe Premiere projects eliminates the need to render the project
before applying visual effects and animations in After Effects. When you import an Adobe
Premiere 5.0 or later project, After Effects imports it into the Project window as both a new
composition containing each Adobe Premiere clip as a layer, and as a folder containing
each clip as an individual footage item. If your Adobe Premiere project contains bins, After
Effects converts them to folders within the Adobe Premiere project folder.
After Effects preserves the order of clips in the Timeline, the footage duration (including all
trimmed In and Out points), and the marker and transition locations. The arrangement of
layers in the Timeline window is based on the arrangement of clips in the Premiere
Timeline. After Effects adds Adobe Premiere clips to the Timeline window as layers in the
order they appeared—from the bottom up and from left to right—in the Premiere
Timeline.
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