CS5 After Effects and Premiere Pro

Question

I am using CS5 After Effects and Premiere Pro with footage from a Canon 5D Mark III. Shooting/editing 1080p 24 (or at least their version of it). What are the best render settings/codecs to use to export from AE for import into Premiere Pro other than the animation codec or Pro Res? I dont have Pro Res and the animation codec is great but the file size slows down the app. Thx in advance.
Or a few resources to explain the whole codec/export/bitrate/etc issue once and for all for different situations wether it be brodcast or internet or simply burning a dvd to play on a HD TV. It is almost like this is some kind of secret no one will tell...LOL...i cant find a difinitive answer anywhere.

Answer 1

As is stated above there are Production codecs which can be lossless, nearly lossless, and at higher bit depth. Production Codecs include Uncompressed (huge files but fast do decode and will not playback in real time) Editing Codecs like Black Magic, Avid, ProRez, and others that are smaller, can still be lossless, may support alpha channels and higher bit depths, and Archival Codecs like Microcosm, JPEG2000, PNG, which support alpha channels, are lossless, and on some systems, will playback in real time.
Editing codecs are specifically designed to be played back in a NLE. These are good choices for a Premiere Pro / AE workflow. So are Archival Codecs. If your project involves a lot of sharing of files between users and apps, then pick a format common to everyone that is at the highest bit depth your storage system can accommodate.
There are also image sequence formats. These include PSD sequences, TGA, TIFF, PNG and others. Some support higher bit depth (32bit Float). Image Sequences work great, have advantages when it comes to correcting just a few frames here and there, and are used to a great extent in professional production pipelines. They are much more flexible than video but they have a distinct disadvantage when it comes to keeping track of the files and keeping things organized.
Then there are delivery codecs. These are designed for playback. They are not suitable for production because delivery codecs use GOP compression, are limited to low bit depth, and are not lossless. IOW, if you render to a delivery codec, then you process and render again to the same codec the artifacts start to build up. H.264 for example, after just 2 or 3 passes, even at very high quality settings, falls completely apart.
Consumer and ProSumer cameras use delivery codecs for image capture. Your Cannon 5D does. This is OK, and it's the only option you've got with some cameras, but the best workflow for these types of capture systems is to transcode the footage to a production codec before you do anything. Production codecs will render faster because it takes less time to decode the footage for processing. You should never render AVCHD or MPEG footage back to the same codec. Always use a production codec until you're project is ready to archive and deliver.
One note on ProRez on Windows. This is not a good idea for production. You cannot maintain proRez native 10bit color space. You should not render to ProRez using 3rd party workarounds because you're just building a proRez container for a windows compressed video. Sure, it will playback on a Mac, but the actual image will have lost important detail and color depth.
Let me give my humble opinion on Dynamic Link. This works great for a shot or two in a Premiere Sequence. This works great for working with Audio in Premiere and Audition. This works great for rendering for delivery or even production using the Adobe Media Encoder. Did you note my second sentence? Dynamic link between AE and Premiere Pro for a few shots in a sequence is a good idea and a time saver, but if you're cutting a film that's over a few minutes, each scene should be it's own sequence. If the scene has more than just a few shots that need to be processed in After Effects then using Dynamic Link can easily become a monster you don't want to deal with. The key to efficient post production of an effects laden production is planning. You've got to cut for story first, then produce your effects shots with sufficient handles (extra frames) to allow some fine tuning, then recut the final. Any other workflow on a long project is just wasting time.