Adobe’s Dynamic Link is by far one of the best features that Premiere Pro and After Effect have to offer. It allows Premiere Pro to import AE compositions without rendering them first, and with the release of Live Text Templates, this became even better.
Live Text Templates allow you to edit text in an AE composition within Premiere Pro without affecting the existing design and animation. Why is this important? Firstly, it allows anyone with only limited knowledge in AE to quickly modify existing compositions. Secondly, revisions are much faster, because you don’t have to call your motion designer just to correct a misspelling. And lastly, you can easily duplicate Live Text Templates so you can use them again and again inside your project.
However, take note that for the time being, this feature only allows you to change the text, so you won’t be able to modify the font, text size, colors, or alignment just yet. But for some simple revisions, this works very well. It’s also available only for versions CC 2014 and up. Here’s a rundown of how it works.
For this tutorial, I’ll be using the composition I created for my post on How to Create Lower Thirds in AE. To get started, open your After Effects composition open and go to Composition > Composition Settings.
When the Composition Settings window open, select “Advanced.” Check “Template (unlocked text layers editable in Premiere Pro)” and press OK.
And that’s it — this composition is now editable in Premiere Pro CC. To import it, go to File > Import in Premiere Pro and select your AE project file.
The “Import Project: Live Text Templates” window will open. I’m choosing “Import Entire Project,” since I only have one composition. If you have more than one, you can check “Import Selected Sequences” and choose the one that you need. You can leave “Create folder for imported items” active if you want to put everything in one bin (folder).
Select your AE composition in the project panel, then right click and choose “New Sequence from Clip.” This creates a new sequence that exactly matches your AE composition.
Select your AE composition in the timeline and press “F” to “Match Source.” This will load the clip into the Source Monitor. Alternatively, you can also drag your composition from the Project Panel to the Source Monitor. Next, go to the Effect Controls panel or press Shift+5.
Premiere displays all the editable text templates. Each line of text in the After Effects composition is seen as a separate line of editable text in Premiere Pro.
Here, I updated our actor’s title and changed it from “Financial Adviser” to “Financial Analyst.” And just like that, we have updated our text. The great thing is that this doesn’t change the original AE source file, so you can use your template multiple times.
Ideally, if you’re doing this in your own project, it would be a better idea to turn off the background and just leave your graphics. I’ll go back to AE and turn off my video background.
This update will also be reflected in Premiere Pro. Next, I’m duplicating my template and changing the name of the person. Then I’m placing it on top of a new clip.
As you can see, everything is done quickly and with very little hassle. This can be done in any existing After Effects files that have text.
If you want to learn more, check out our posts on After Effects 101, How to Animate Text, and How to Create Lower Thirds Graphics in AE.
