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Participant
May 8, 2025
Open for Voting

light weight faster and easier video and animation tools

  • May 8, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 337 views

After effects is great...  But some times I need a tool that is light weight IE starts up lighting fast and is easy to jump right into...  to convert or compress a movie file to differnt formates...  Or create a fast simple animation that is a simple tween.  or text fade in....  Aftereffect is great for high power video work...  But I miss flash for faster animation work...  Or It would be help to have a super light weight converstion and compression tool where you can convert and compress files... 

2 replies

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 10, 2025

Specifically for quick video conversion and compression, try Shutter Encoder (donationware).  It's cross platform, launches quickly, and has very broad video format support. 

David.Arbor
Community Manager
Community Manager
May 8, 2025

Hey there @Stephen30513916jn80,

 

Adobe Animate (formerly Flash) does still exist if that's a workflow you're missing. Also, "lightweight" is a relatively vague term, but Media Encoder is pretty simple to use. You can ignore half of its panels (in fact, I have a workspace that's a "light mode" (see screenshot below) where I hide the Media Browser and the Preset Browser. Granted, hiding two panels doesn't change much functionally, but often you can get everything you need by picking a format and a preset. Plus, depending on how many plug-ins you have installed, AME can start up in just a few seconds. I just clocked it at 8 seconds to startup, and that's because I have several hundred plug-ins installed.

 

- David, After Effects Engineering Team