Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 92)

86 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Importing and managing footage items
Last updated 12/21/2009
Loop a footage item
If you intend to loop a visual footage item continuously in your project, you only need to create one cycle of the footage
item in After Effects.
1 In the Project panel, select the footage item to loop.
2 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.
3 Type an integer value for Loop and click OK.
Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro
Import an After Effects project
You can import one After Effects project into another. Everything from the imported project—including footage
items, compositions, and folders—appears inside a new folder in the current Project panel.
You can import an After Effects project from a different operating system, as long as you maintain the filenames, folder
names, and either full or relative paths (folder locations) for all files in the project. To maintain relative paths, the
source footage files must reside on the same volume as the project file. Use the File > Collect Files command to gather
copies of all files in a project or composition into a single location. (See “
Cross-platform project considerations ” on
page 36.)
Note: When you render a movie and export it to the QuickTime (MOV), Video for Windows (AVI), FLV, or F4V
container format, you can embed a link to the project in the container file. To import the project, import the MOV, AVI,
FLV, or F4V file, and choose Project from the Import As menu in the Import File dialog box. If the file contains a link to
a project that has been moved, you can browse to locate the project.
1 Choose File > Import > File.
2 Select the After Effects project to import, and click Open.
If the operating system that you are using does not support a file format, 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 by double-clicking the entry in the Project panel and navigating to the source file. In most cases, you
need to relink only one footage file. After Effects locates other missing items if they’re in the same location.
More Help topics
“ Collect files in one location ” on page 695
“ Placeholders and proxies ” on page 83
Import an Adobe Premiere Pro project
Important: Importing an Adobe Premiere Pro project into After Effects does not use Dynamic Link. After Effects can’t
import a Premiere Pro project if one or more sequences in it are already dynamically linked to After Effects. (See “
Working
with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects ” on page 42.)
When you import an Adobe Premiere Pro project, After Effects imports it into the Project panel as both a new
composition containing each Adobe Premiere Pro clip as a layer, and as a folder containing each clip as an individual
footage item. If your Adobe Premiere Pro project contains bins, After Effects converts them to folders within the
Adobe Premiere Pro project folder. After Effects converts nested sequences to nested compositions. You can also
import Adobe Premiere 6.0 and 6.5 projects into After Effects.