Production Studio Integration

Bridge's benefits are clear, but what about Production Studio? Is it worth the upgrade? If you do a lot of work with Audition or After Effects as well as Premiere Pro, the answer is probably yes. Production Studio gives you the power of Premiere Pro's Edit in Adobe Audition feature for seamless transfer and editing of audio clips between Premiere and Audition, as well as Adobe Dynamic Link, which takes Premiere Pro and After Effects integration to a new level. With Dynamic Link you can create an After Effects composition from inside of Premiere Pro or import an existing After Effects composition into Premiere Pro and work in both applications simultaneously; the referenced comp from After Effects updates and displays accurately inside of Premiere Pro.

After I show you how to quickly and easily edit your audio files inside Adobe Audition 2.0 using Edit in Adobe Audition, I'll walk you through a practical example of using Dynamic Link to add animated text to a Premiere Pro sequence.

Editing in Adobe Audition

In past versions, if you were in Premiere Pro and wanted to edit or adjust the audio portion of a file in Adobe Audition, you had to export the audio as a separate file, edit it in Audition, save the Audition adjustments, and finally import the files back into Premiere. The 2.0 versions replace this cumbersome process with one simple menu choice: Edit > Edit in Adobe Audition.

With an audio/video or audio-only file selected in Premiere Pro 2.0's Timeline or Project panel, choose Edit > Edit in Adobe Audition to extract the audio from the file and open a temporary copy of that audio in Audition automatically. The original file in not overwritten or changed. When you finish modifying the audio in Audition, simply save it and the saved changes are dynamically updated to the referenced file in Premiere Pro. Because Premiere Pro makes a copy of the file when you select Edit in Adobe Audition, the most practical method of taking advantage of this feature is from a clip instance in the timeline.

To make things clearer, the next sections demonstrate two tasks that typically demand quality results. Using Edit in Adobe Audition for these will make your editing life easier and audible results better. If you have Audition 2.0 (or if you've installed the tryout version of Audition from this book's DVD), you can with these short lessons; otherwise the pictures will tell the storyand may convince you to look more closely at Audition or Production Studio.

Notes

You'll find a tryout version of Audition located in the Software Tryouts folder on the book's disc.

The Amplify Effect

One of the most frustrating issues with displaying an audio waveform in Premiere Pro's timeline is that the amplitude of waveform often is not as dramatic or visually dynamic as you might desire (Figure 12.11). Even if you were to increase the gain of an audio file inside of Premiere Pro, the waveform display does not expand as the decibels of the audio are increased. Using the Edit in Adobe Audition feature, you can increase and amplify the audio and waveform with a few quick steps.

Figure 12.11. Even with Audio 1 expanded, the waveform information for the audio portion of the clip B Cam 01.avi is quite small. In general, this means that the audio is not that loud to begin with

1.	Open the project file Edit_in_Audition.prproj from the APPST2 Lesson Files/Chapter 12 folder.
2.	In the Amplify sequence, find the audio/video clip (B Cam 01.avi) that displays a weak or low amplitude waveform (Figure 12.11). Right-click on the audio portion of the file and choose Edit in Adobe Audition (Figure 12.12) to extract that audio from the selected file and open it in Audition. Figure 12.12. By right-clicking on the boundary of any audio clip in the timeline, you can access the Edit in Adobe Audition function When you choose Edit in Adobe Audition, Premiere Pro actually performs a Render and Replace, quickly creating a new clip instance of the audio file and replacing the previous timeline instance with this new one. This extracted audio file replaces the previously linked audio in the timeline so that instead of overwriting the source audio, you are now applying effects to a clip built from the source audio.
3.	With the replacement audio file open in Audition, choose Effects > Amplitude > Amplify from Audition (Figure 12.13). In the resulting VST Plugin - Amplify dialog, add an 8.1 dB gain adjustment (Figure 12.14). Click OK and watch the waveform amplify within Audition. Select File > Save to save the effect settings into the file, then switch back to Premiere Pro (Figure 12.15).

Figure 12.13. With your file open in Audition, select Amplify from Audition's Effects menu

Figure 12.14. In the Amplify dialog, make your gain adjustments to your audio file

Figure 12.15. After you apply and save the Amplify effect in Audition, the PEK file associated with the audio clip updates and Premiere Pro displays the modified waveform. Compare this waveform to that in Figure 12.13, and you can see the clear benefit of using this workflow to enhance your audio

Although your gain adjustment settings will differ from file to file, the steps are the same. With the file open in Audition, you quickly can apply an Amplify effect to the file to increase the gain of the audio. This effect updates the audio of the file, thus causing the waveform to expand. Saving the effect adjustment writes the changes into the file. When Premiere is opened, the snapshot of the audio waveform information (PEK file) updates and the waveform expands to display the changes.

This lesson is very simple, but you can use it time and again to create more robust audio waveforms for use inside of Premiere Pro. The next short lesson builds on this project and shows you how to reduce excess noise from files.

Noise Reduction

One audio effect that is sorely missing in Premiere Pro is a simple straightforward noise reduction tool. Audition, being the solid audio editing application that it is, has excellent Noise Reduction, Hiss Reduction, and Click/Pop Removal effects. For a quick example of how to reduce the noise in a file, follow these steps:

1.	In Premiere Pro, open the Edit_in_Audition.prproj project file from the APPST2 Lesson Files/Chapter 12 folder.
2.	Open the sequence Noise Reduction. Right-click on the file in the timeline, and choose Edit in Adobe Audition from the menu. Again, Premiere Pro renders and replaces the audio and then opens the file inside of Audition.
3.	Play the audio in Audition to find a section of the file that yields only the noise that needs to be removed, such as the silent section near the end of the file. Click and drag within the audio waveform to select this section (Figure 12.16). Figure 12.16. To properly reduce the noise in a file, you have to manually find a section of the file that has the noise without any other sounds. Click and drag to select an appropriate small segment from which Audition can capture a noise profile To remove noise, hisses, clicks, or pops, you need first to identify and select a portion of the file where you can hear the unwanted noise and nothing else. Then you're ready to open the Noise Reduction effect.
4.	Choose Effects > Restoration > Noise Reduction. In the resulting dialog, click Capture Profile in the top corner. Click Select Entire File, then click OK (Figures 12.17 a through d). Save the adjustment you just made, and switch back to Premiere Pro to play the fixed audio.

Figures 12.17a through d. The profile Audition creates will reference the selection of audio beneath the dialog (a). Once the profile is captured, it displays graphically in the Noise Reduction dialog (b). Clicking Select Entire File (c) processes the effect to be processed on the entire clip, not just the previously selected short area. Look at the final waveform's amplitude (d); you can see it is completely flat in sections where it previously had a low but audible amount of sound

By capturing a noise profile of the selected area, Audition intelligently identifies the audio that should be there and the "noise" that shouldn't. Clicking Select Entire File applies the Noise Reduction profile to the entire clip so that the effect removes the noise from the entire file, not just the section you captured as the profile.

Notes

If you do not have Adobe Audition 2.0 (or choose not to install the tryout version of the book's disc) you can simply open the Project Edit_in_Audition_FINISH.prproj file from the APPST2 Lesson Files/Chapter 12 folder and compare the FINISH sequence audio to that of the original.

In my opinion, Noise Reduction and the other restoration effects make Adobe Audition 2.0 a necessity for your video editing system. It's not too difficult to learn how to run these simple effects that can clean up clips beyond what's possible in most audio and video applications. Audition's restoration features are second to none, and with Premiere Pro 2.0's Edit in Adobe Audition feature, they are easy to access and apply to any editing workflow.

After Effects and Dynamic Link

As I mentioned earlier, Adobe Dynamic Link provides tighter integration between Premiere Pro and After Effects for Production Studio owners, allowing you to create an After Effects composition with a placeholder inside of Premiere Pro that updates dynamically as you update the composition. In former versions you had to copy and paste from Premiere Pro to After Effects or vice versa. Now you can import an After Effects composition directly into Premiere Pro and have it appear as a clip in your Project panel. Because the general steps of using Dynamic Link to create or import composition are the same no matter what the content of the composition, this lesson is a generic step-by-step that highlights the important moments of the workflow.

Notes

Only Adobe Production Studio provides access to the Dynamic Link feature inside Premiere Pro. It will not help you if you purchased Premiere Pro and After Effects as stand-alone programs.

1.	Open a Premiere Pro project to which you wish to add an After Effects composition. I chose the Sample Project so I could add some animated text.
2.	With your project open, choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > New After Effects Composition (Figure 12.18) from Premiere Pro. Give the After Effects file a name, such as Text Animation. Figure 12.18. From the File menu of Premiere Pro 2.0 (with the Production Studio installed), you can create an After Effects composition by selecting File > Adobe Dynamic Link > New After Effects Composition To create a Dynamic Link composition, simply select the option from the File menu. When creating a composition you must first name the project, then After Effects launches with a new comp open that is linked back to your Premiere Pro project. The name of the comp will include your project's name as well as the phrase "Linked Comp 01." The number increments for every Dynamic Link comp you create.
3.	In After Effects, select Workspace: Text from the Workspace drop-down menu in the top-right corner of the interface. Right-click on the tab of the Effects & Presets panel and from the right-click menu choose Browse Presets. In Bridge, double-click on the Text folder in the content area, double-click Fill and Stroke, then double-click on Pulse Orange.ffx (see Figures 12.19 a and b). Reopen After Effects and double-click the newly created Text layer in the comp (see Figure 12.20) and type the phrase "Saleen S7" (see Figure 12.21). Figures 12.19a and b. With After Effects open and the Text workspace active, you have all the panels necessary for doing text animations (a). Right-clicking on the Effects & Presets tab opens Bridge from which you double-click on the text effect preset that you want to apply, in this case Pulse Orange.ffx (b) Figure 12.20. When you double-click on a text animation preset, by default it applies itself as a text layer in the currently open comp Figure 12.21. Double-clicking on this text layer selects the text and allows you to immediately change the characters by retyping whatever you want. When you finish typing, click back in the blank space of your Timeline panel
4.	Click and select the Text layer in the Timeline panel and press the P key to open the Position settings. Assign the value 40.0, 400.0, press Enter (Figure 12.22), and then press Ctrl+S to save the After Effects project. Figure 12.22. Selecting the Text layer Saleen S7 in the Timeline panel and pressing the P key reveals the position settings associated with the Text layer. Modifying the value repositions the text into a more desirable location Notes Bridge is also the hub for previewing and selecting presets and templates for use in Adobe After Effects. When you double-click a preset it is loaded into the open comp. Double-clicking on the Text layer allows you to quickly select and then change the letters to customize them for your project. After you finish typing, be sure you switch back to the Selection tool or click off the Composition panel or in the blank space of the Timeline panel. You quickly repositioned the text into the lower-left corner of the frame, then saved the project to ensure that the adjusted composition will reveal through Dynamic Link exactly as you set it up once After Effects is closed.
5.	Toggle back to and open Premiere Pro. In the Project panel you should see a file named in the form PREMIERE PROJECT NAME+Linked Comp 01/AFTER EFFECTS PROJECT NAME. In this case, the name is Sample_NTSC Linked Comp 01/Text Animation.aep. Drag and drop this file directly onto the Video 2 track at the beginning of the timeline and trim the clip so that it ends at 04;00 in the sequence. With the Timeline panel active, press the Home key and then press the spacebar (Figure 12.23).

Figure 12.23. Here you can see the icon and Project panel item created by the Dynamic Link feature. With the file added to the timeline, you can see that the animated text created with the comp in After Effects appears inside of Premiere Pro's Program Monitor. Because the Text Animation file is built as text with an alpha channel, the Sample Project's video plays underneath the animated title

When creating a Dynamic Link composition, Premiere Pro creates a project item that directly references the Dynamic Link composition from After Effects. The Dynamic Link clip is in essence a placeholder for the After Effects comp. When the After Effects comp updates, the Premiere Pro Dynamic Link file updates to reflect those changes. You can edit and manipulate the Dynamic Link clip as you would any other clip in Premiere Pro. To make this example more fluid you could add a Dissolve Transition to the beginning and end of the clip in the timeline after you trim the clip to the proper duration.

This lesson serves as a teaser for what you can do with Dynamic Link. A second Dynamic Link feature enables you to import an existing composition from a previously created After Effects project. To do this:

1.	Select File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition.
2.	In the Import Composition dialog, navigate to the After Effects project that holds the composition you want to import: APPST2 Lesson Files\Chapter 12\Text Animation.aep (Figure 12.24). Figure 12.24. If you want to import an existing After Effects composition into a Premiere Pro project using Dynamic Link, select File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition, then navigate to the desired After Effects project file in the Import Composition dialog. Finally, select the composition you want to open inside of Premiere Pro
3.	Select the composition to import into Premiere Pro using Dynamic Link.