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SCC_Video
Participant
November 1, 2022

AE H.264 Exporter - Awful Audio Quality

  • November 1, 2022
  • 16 replies
  • 4605 views

The new H264 encoder out of AE is a welcome addition, but am I the only one experiencing absolutely horrible audio quality?  Even if I set the AAC bitrate to 512kbps, music still sounds heavily compressed.  Video quality is solid; not sure why the audio is so bad.

 

If I send it through to Media Encoder, audio is fine, even at a lower bitrate.

 

Is this a bug of some kind, or is there some hidden setting I can change?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    16 replies

    F
    Fernando22976961ayan
    Participant
    March 13, 2023

    I am still experiencing this issue, even after updating to the latest version of After Effects

    JohnColombo17100380
    Community Manager
    JohnColombo17100380Community Manager
    Community Manager
    December 20, 2022

    Hi all,

    Thank you for reporting this issue. This bug with H.264 audio has been Fixed in the 23.1 version of After Effects. Please install After Effects 23.1 and let us know right away if you continue to experience this issue.

     

    Cheers, 

    - John, After Effects Engineering Team 

      J
      Community Manager
      jason_bartellCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      December 2, 2022

      This issue is fixed in the current beta and will be available in the next After Effect release.

      J
      Community Manager
      jason_bartellCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      December 2, 2022

      @Dubon,

       

      The fix will be in the next release which is not far off.

       

      Cheers,

      Jason

      M
      mikee65398738
      Participant
      November 18, 2022

      When using the Native H.264 Rendering option in After Effects 23, I'm able to set the video and audio bitrates in the output module, but after pressing OK, the audio bitrate will often reset itself to a much lower number. This happens completely at random.

       

      For example, I'll set the bitrate to AAC 320kbps, press OK, then press OK again to exit the Output Module settings, then go back into them, and it will have set itself to 40kbps. This happens both when changing the settings manually and when using a saved preset. The video bitrate settings are unaffected by this and seem to work as they should but it's impossible to reliably export H.264 audio - sometimes you get what you want, other times AE gives you what it wants.

       

      After Effects version 23 (Build 59)

      MacOS Monterey 12.6

       

      Mylenium
      Mylenium
      Legend
      November 19, 2022

      This appears to be releated to another issue where multiple consecutive renders cause bad audio quality. If the bitrate indeed changes arbitrarily, this could explain the bad quality on a second or third render of the same project. The devs are aware of the latter issue, so I'm sure they would have a look at this problem as well.

       

      Mylenium

      D
      Dubon
      Participating Frequently
      November 30, 2022

      It works like a charm. Do you have any idea when it will be released ?

      While we are here, it's no really correlated but the other issue I have is that I can't render two mp4 simultaneously when I use hardware encoding (tested on up-to-date nvidia RTX 2080, 3070, 3080 or 3080Ti). Only one of the two renders works. It's the same in AME. I tell you that because when I tested the beta, I forgot to remove hardware encoding and AE simply crashed. Usually it's just the render that doesn't work.

       

      Thanks !

      J
      Community Manager
      jason_bartellCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      November 30, 2022

      Hi @SCC_Video @Dubon @del_razor @Stellar_Melody5FB7 @gabriel5E9E ,

       

      We have fixed the H.264 audio export issue and the fix available now in beta builds in the Creative Cloud Desktop application. Please give it a shot and let us know if you see any further issues.

       

      Thank you again for taking the time to let us know.

       

      Cheers,

      Jason

      G
      gabriel5E9E
      Inspiring
      November 22, 2022

      I'm having the same issue, but i've noticed that sometimes when I need to change something in my project and render it again, the audio becomes better. 
      But sometimes, when I need to change something again, the audio get worse too. 

      S
      Stellar_Melody5FB7
      Participant
      November 11, 2022

      I have this same issue too. I render a bunch of mp4's and half of them have corrupt audio. I tried switching to MPEG instead of AAC but it didn't resolve the issue. Having the ability to render mp4 is great, but this audio issue is frustrating.

       

      Mac Monterey

      2.3 GHz 18-Core Intel Xeon W

      128GB Memeory Radeon Pro

      AE 23

        D
        del_razor
        Participant
        November 9, 2022

        Just wanted to chime in here and also agree that it's after a second render of the same output module.  I had a client come back and tell me my audio on a second render was bad.  I had changed some text in the comp and re-rendered using the "duplicate with filename" function in the render queue. the same exact settings as the first, and the second one sounded super compressed.  I'm moving back to AfterCodecs for my h.264 encoding the time being.

          J
          Community Manager
          jason_bartellCommunity Manager
          Community Manager
          November 7, 2022

          Hi @SCC_Video and @Dubon,

           

          Thank you for reporting this issue along with the key details. We're looking into it.

           

          Cheers,

          Jason

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