How to use .mogrt templates in Premiere Pro

A .mogrt is a Motion Graphics Template: an After Effects composition, or a Premiere Pro graphic, packed with the controls its author chose to expose. In Premiere you drop it on the timeline like a clip and edit it from a panel, without touching After Effects. Here is the whole workflow, plus the three things that trip people up.

Install a template

1. Open Window › Essential Graphics and click the Browse tab.
2. Click the Install Motion Graphics Template button at the bottom right of the panel (a small box with an arrow), or drag the .mogrt file straight into the panel.
3. It appears under Local Templates Folder. Star it to find it quickly next time.

Templates are copied to %APPDATA%\Adobe\Common\Motion Graphics Templates on Windows and ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Motion Graphics Templates on macOS. If you keep a library on a shared or cloud drive, open the folder menu at the top of the Browse tab, choose Manage Additional Folders and add it; nothing gets copied.

Use it in a sequence

Drag the template from the Browse tab onto a video track above your footage. It becomes a graphic clip you can trim and move like any other. Select it and open the Edit tab of the Essential Graphics panel: the text fields, colors, sliders and checkboxes there are the controls the author exposed. Everything you type updates live.

To make it longer, drag the end of the clip. Templates built with Responsive Design: Time keep their intro and outro animation intact and stretch only the middle. Others stretch the whole animation, so check the result.

The three things that go wrong

1. "This template requires After Effects"

Templates made in After Effects render through Dynamic Link, which means After Effects must be installed on the same computer, from the same release year as Premiere. You do not have to open it; Premiere launches it in the background. Templates made in Premiere itself have no such requirement and play back faster. Hover a thumbnail in the Browse tab and its tooltip tells you which kind it is.

2. Missing fonts

A yellow warning on the clip means a font is missing. Click it: Premiere offers to activate the font from Adobe Fonts if it is available there. Otherwise install the font and restart. Until then, text is set in a substitute and nothing lines up.

3. Choppy playback

After Effects templates are heavier than native graphics. Set playback resolution to 1/2 while editing, and render the section once you are happy: mark the range and press Enter (Sequence › Render In to Out). A green bar means it plays at full speed.

Reusing your edits

For graphics you built in Premiere, right-click the clip and choose Export As Motion Graphics Template to save your version, with your colors and text as the defaults. It lands in your Local Templates Folder next to the original.

When you still need After Effects

If the thing you want to change is not in the Edit tab, the author did not expose it, and no setting in Premiere will reveal it. The fix is in After Effects: open the source project, make the change, and export the template again from the Essential Graphics panel there (Export Motion Graphics Template). Keep the versions matched; a template saved from a newer After Effects will not open in an older Premiere.