Why does VH accept Premiere Templates that are only editable in After Effects?

Hi guys,

in the Premiere Pro template section there are several Logo Stings that needs to be edited in After Effects (Logo swap out). In my opinion, this is not a Premiere Template then, as there is no way for the customer to edit the project in the Main application at all and there is really no reason to offer this as a Premiere Template instead of an After Effects template.

What do you think?

In my opinion, all Premiere Templates that do not work in Premiere alone and require the Customer to edit in After Effects shall be rejected with a note to submit the template to After Effects category.

Really, as a Customer I expect a Premiere Pro Template to work in Premiere Pro, if I want to edit in After Effects I am looking for an AE template.

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Agree. For customers it’s much simpler to import AE composition to Premiere than to use mogrt files.

With the new Motion Graphics Template (.mogrt) file type, and Essential Graphics panel introduced by Adobe not long ago, the workflow between Premiere and After Effects has been changed forever.

This more compatible workflow has also significantly blurred the lines regarding what constitutes a true Premiere-compatible project file. Especially considering the Essential Graphics panel accomplishes the exact same things in both Premiere and After Effects.

Technically, all .mogrt files are specifically prepared for use within Adobe Premiere. However, these files can also be opened within After Effects and contain full editability in their original .aep form.

As some of you may already know, there are basically 2 ways to make an After Effects project compatible with Premiere:

  1. Use the Essential Graphics panel within After Effects to build a Premiere-compatible file for exporting as a .mogrt.
  2. Build your .aep file as a .prproj for full placeholder editability within premiere (or Export as Premiere Pro project).

Both of these methods produce a Premiere-compatible project, but only the .prproj format will contain full editability features within Premiere.

Because of the current editability limitations, not all .aep templates are easily converted into .mogrt format, and in some cases, a .aep is better converted to .prproj instead (especially projects that contain a lot of image/video placeholders that need to be replaced by the user).

However – and this is the main point – not all .aep files are compatible with Premiere. An After Effects project needs to be made compatible with Premiere via the Essential Graphics panel… so any author that cusotmized their .aep to be exported as a .mogrt has essentially taken enough steps to make that project Premiere-compatible. On the contrary, an author who has not taken the steps to convert a .aep into .mogrt format, has not qualified that project to be Premiere-compatible.

Therefore if a customer was looking for an Ae-only version, they could still purchase that version and not have to revert the .mogrt back to .aep to accomplish this. Not all users have the same skills across all Adobe software, but with the advent of the Adobe Creative cloud, the assumption is most customers have access to both After Effects and Premiere.

So far, we haven’t received any negative feedback from customers who’ve purchased a Mogrt that requires Ae to edit the logo, and most authors provide sufficient help/tutorial documentation helping the customer through the simple editing process.

With all of that said, there is no simple answer here. Adobe has greatly blurred the lines between applications, and the fact that we allow a mogrt file to require editing in After Effects first (such as replacing the logo), provides the greatest amount of flexibility for both the customer and the author.

In future releases of Adobe’s CC software, this line will begin to blur even more. For example, CC2019 now allows .mogrt font customization inside of Premiere, which was not previously possible. In future releases, its not out of the question that Adobe will allow media placeholders to be easily swapped out (perhaps like the Apple Motion Drop Zones?), so Ae may not need to be used at all.

Authors should always ben 100% straightforward in their descriptions. For example, if a project requires Ae for swapping out the logo, then that author should clearly express that in the item description, and be sure to select BOTH “Adobe Premiere Pro” and “Adobe After Effects” from the software dropdown menu.

However, to reiterate, customers so far seem to be relatively pleased with the greater flexibility, and have not expressed any issues about the current structure. Of course that could change in the future, but for now it has not prompted any concern.

Thanks Tyson!

I’m currently looking at a Logo Reveal that requires the user to first open an “.aep” file, swap out the logo, then create the .mogrt file by himself, then import into Premiere, then change things like color.

This just seemed user-unfriendly to me.
My experience with mogrts is that After Effects is much faster in editing than Premiere is, so when the User is already forced to go to After Effects to swap out the logo, he could also edit the colors and text right here.

Right now, this is an AE template that the user can easily convert to a mogrt compatible with Premiere, but with not all Customization Options.

If Premiere Pro users have no problem in editing in AE instead, I really wonder then why they buy the Premiere version instead of the After Effects version.

That is good to know, thanks for that info. I might think about creating some logo reveals then, but I cannot really believe that this is the best User experience.

Can you give me a link where this process is explained?

Kind regards,
Tobi

BTW, CC2019 does totally break the MOGRT system for me. All mogrts stop to update when the font is changed. Even the ones who come with premiere.

Also, CC2019 does not work well with old MOGRTs and changes their fonts.

As every release, CC2019 is full of bugs.

Do you have a different experience?

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To be honest I haven’t updated to CC2019 yet. I’m working on releasing a few more MotionRevolver templates and was going to wait until afterward.

Have you seen anything similar from other users on the Adobe forums? If there are serious issues being raised by users, I’m sure Adobe is already on it.

This is good to know, however, so thanks for the heads-up. Perhaps when I do update to CC2019, I’ll leave the latest version of CC2018 available on my computer as well.

Thanks for letting know about missing fonts in MOGRT. Adobe should fix this compatibility, because right now it absolutely uncomfortable and irritatingly to use MOGRT from CC 2018 in Premiere Pro CC 2019. All fonts are gone!

The most stupid thing that I notice in AE CC 2019 is “home” button at the top-left corner. After editing any text, I accidentally press on this button instead of “Selection Tool”. Already happened to me one hundred times. :rage:
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The reason there is still the ability to sell separate Ae versions and Premiere versions, is mostly to provide flexibility for authors.

I agree that it’s typically easier to edit certain elements within Ae. However, to illustrate why providing a Premiere version in addition to an Ae version, let’s pretend you’re a Premiere Pro editor who doesn’t typically use After Effects, but understands Adobe software enough to be able to perform a simple logo replacement. You could replace the logo in Ae, and then export the .mogrt file for use within Premiere, but yet still perform edits in Premiere to that same .mogrt file without needing to go back to Ae. Therefore, you could theoretically be editing a large video sequence, while still having access to editable motion graphics elements without needing to constantly move back and forth between Ae and Pr.

Again, with .mogrt files and the Essential Graphics panel, the lines are blurred regarding proper workflow. These attributes simply provide greater flexibility, and allow authors and customers to work however they feel is best.

From my own personal perspective as an author, I’m building all of my Ae templates to be compatible with Premiere in .mogrt format. This way, a customer who is not familiar with Ae can still utilize the project, but if they have After Effects knowledge, they can still open that .mogrt in Ae and perform customizations there as well.

As far as exporting an .aep as a .prproj, I don’t have a ton of experience with this method, but I believe there are a couple ways to accomplish it. These articles may help:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/dynamic-link-effects.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/export-effects-project-premiere-pro.html

I’ve reported both the missing font bug as well as the font change bug.
The missing font bug has a wide range of other users confirming, the font change bug has only one upvote from another user so far.

Adobe did request a MOGRT where this happens, which makes me wonder, as all, even the ones included, show this behaviour here. Maybe it’s a problem on my end, I will test with other computers.

But right now, the missing font bug can easily be solved by me by exporting the mogrt again from AE CC2019.
The font change bug however is a deal breaker. I cannot sell Templates that totally stop working as soon as the font is changed.

(There is a fix to this as well: editing the text. If one edits the text, the mogrt updates again. But if the user first enters the text he wants and then wants to change the font he is trapped forever, as even changing the text to something else and then back will not solve the problem, as the first text always has the mogrt not updating)

Unfortunately, in doing so you lose compatibility with CC 2018 version. To have working mogrt file in both versions, you actually need two mogrt files, one for CC 2018, and one for CC 2019.

That is correct, but I guess I will be converting my mogrts as soon as the font change bug is solved and ask my users to use CC2019 because changing the font is just too valuable for the end user.
I will provide CC2018 versions alongside wherever the filesize allows it.

But it’s a bad precedent. If Adobe don’t care about compatibility, next year you would update your templates again for CC 2020. Then for CC 2021 and so on. It’s a headache for us.

The CC2019 version not correctly importing CC2018 Mogrts is considered a bug, even by Adobe. They are not dropping support.

In fact, besides the font problem the mogrts work fine for me. As soon as that is resolved you have perfect backwards compatibility.

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Hope so.

As far as I know, at least After Effects has always been able to open project files from previous versions (sometimes needing to convert them first, though). Some problems with Effects changing names or removed effects, yes, but overall it did work. I think the same is true for Premiere (but I’m not using that daily for almost 10 years like AE, so maybe I’m wrong about this).

I don’t think MOGRTs will ever be incompatible to new versions. Adobe has its own marketplace to sell mogrts, they do not really want that their newest software cannot use their whole marketplace full of items anymore

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Yes, you are right. I just don’t like how Adobe release their updates, always full of bugs.

That is true. CS6 is still the most stable version for me, as soon as they switched to subscription they became more lazy with their bug fixing than ever.

Hilarious, CS6 is 7 years old by now, and still performs better than their latest version for me.

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Adobe has released an update for Premiere that fixes all MOGRT related bugs, feel free to try it out guys, maybe you find other quirks but I find it stable so far.

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