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Answered

After Effect 2018 Upgrade: H264 is missing from Format Option when Quicktime format is selected.

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
April 6, 2018
17 replies
147913 views

hi, i have just upgraded AE to the latest version 2 days ago. Then i realised after i added my AE file to the Render Queue, H264 is no longer listed under the format options after I selected Quicktime.

I can still export to H264 in Premiere pro after the upgrade. Please advise.

John

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Rick Gerard

H.264 files should be in an MP4 container. Apple never did a good job supporting h.264 in a QT container, it was buggy and unreliable, and they are not doing any further development. That is why it was removed. It should have been removed a long time ago.

You should be using the Adobe Media Encoder to render h.264 MP4 files and unless you have expert skills and a thorough knowledge of video formats and compression you should never see the words Custom in a composition setting or a render setting. Just use the presets that match your intended audience and then study up on video formats and compression.

BTW, this question has been asked and answered hundreds of times. Many of those answers are on this forum and they are all the same. Do not use H.264 Quicktime. It's a dead format.

Show previous replies

D

DominicBurgess

Participating Frequently

I've never once had a problem with QT H264. In fact, the only thing I've had a problem with is Media Encoder - it has crashed out on me mid render many times so I don't use it. Plus its just more convenient to hit render in AE rather than having to launch ME. Also, for WIPs, being able to set custom low quality settings is really important as the presets don't offer what I want. Anyway, moving on - so is there no way to even render mp4 from AE now? I have to use ME!?

W

WDTechnicalDirector

Known Participant

Correct, they are slowly taking function out of AE and moving more-and-more into ME. Media Encoder is the workflow now...

raygun76

Participant

It's more than idiotic but Adobe 'as usual' - I had a deadline deliverable for an H264 compressed mov and I was DELIGHTED to find that option missing... Made total sense.

So thinking faster than your average Adobe agent, I reverted back to Media Encoder v 12.0.0 and it had the option.

Killin it guys! I long for the day when NLE standard shifts back away from Premier - NOTE: This is an actual solution, not a debate on why they did something so seemingly backwards.

W

WDTechnicalDirector

Known Participant

Yeah, we had deadlines that couldn't be met in the new update(s) as well. We were forced to downgrade and got our work out. I'm always leery of updates in the middle of production, but damn Adobe, seriously? Just completely unacceptable to create such a break. Terrible planning, testing and rollout. Despicable. I have another thread rolling with Adobe staff to try and figure out why it broke. More to come, thanks for the feedback.

W

WDTechnicalDirector

Known Participant

Quicktime is dead. Also, Apple support for any 32-bit app is ending soon. Get away from Quicktime as soon as you can.

Dave_LaRonde

Inspiring

WDTechnicalDirector wrote
Quicktime is dead. Also, Apple support for any 32-bit app is ending soon. Get away from Quicktime as soon as you can.

Yeah, I'll keep that in mind for my 20-24 hours of historical local QT footage that's anywhere from 10-15 years old.

Do you think I want to make a career out of transcoding or something?

E

epixxtech

Participant

Can it be possible that some formats in the output module settings in AE be similar to that of the export settings formats in Premiere? An example is H.264 in Premiere which has lots of presets which is useful if you want flexibility rather that having to render in AE and switch to Media Encoder. Another way I guess is to just get rid of the pre render/output module and just stick to the add to AME queue instead.

Dave_LaRonde

Inspiring

Well, it IS pretty easy to send comps to AME. Like AE, it gives you the option of creating files in multiple media containers & codecs.

A

alexs71686224

Participating Frequently

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Dave+LaRonde wrote
Well, it IS pretty easy to send comps to AME. Like AE, it gives you the option of creating files in multiple media containers & codecs.

It would have been "easy", if in the "Render queue" -> "Output module" -> "Format" the option "more formats in AME" would have been actually functional. Which is grayed out.

I have just rendered a 48 minutes movie which is 253.3 GB in MOV format.

After launching AME, it crashed, so I have left the following comment, would as well leave it here, just for kicks.

+++

Dear Adobe,

I look forward to finishing my current project and forget working with your suite as a never ending nightmare; for having me to buy additinal hardware just because you have decided to stop supporting h.264 / MP4; "AME" direct export support no longer works; the system is constantly crashing and the work should be redone again and again; the hardware 3D acceleration works only for the previews and does not enhance rendering time; the CAPS LOCK nonsense to "speed up" rendering time by disabling preview - this is absolutely the best.

Thank you so very much for all that, wish you all the best and keep up ripping off the creative industry!

+++

Oh, and by the way - on this forum while I am typing this, the viewport is shifted to the top of the page, and I see the "Correct Answer" instead of the form with my response where I am typing.

RESUME: Adobe is totally messed up.

And on top of that, ruining fotolia.com is just above and beyond. Good job, Adobe!

Please, just let me finish my project and I would forget all of that.

rilieac13726928

Participant

Hello, I have a windows 10 and using the lastest version of after effects, h.264 doesn’t show up anymore and I have no storage to render in AVI or download media encode. Can anyone tell me a way to render my edit without these?

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

rilieac13726928 wrote
Hello, I have a windows 10 and using the lastest version of after effects, h.264 doesn’t show up anymore and I have no storage to render in AVI or download media encode. Can anyone tell me a way to render my edit without these?

If you installed AE you have the Adobe Media Encoder. It installs automatically. It is also small.

If you are out of storage you also have other problems that will adversely affect your projects and cause AE to hang and possibly crash. I suggest you invest a few dollars in an external hard drive. They are extremely affordable and that is where you should be putting your rendered files and storing your source footage.

A

alexs71686224

Participating Frequently

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Rick+Gerard wrote
rilieac13726928 wrote
Hello, I have a windows 10 and using the lastest version of after effects, h.264 doesn’t show up anymore and I have no storage to render in AVI or download media encode. Can anyone tell me a way to render my edit without these?
If you installed AE you have the Adobe Media Encoder. It installs automatically. It is also small.
If you are out of storage you also have other problems that will adversely affect your projects and cause AE to hang and possibly crash. I suggest you invest a few dollars in an external hard drive. They are extremely affordable and that is where you should be putting your rendered files and storing your source footage.

Should you be so inclined to know, sir, that a professional's choice of hard drive is the world's fastest (to date) Samsung 960 Pro PCIe NVMe drive (on a consumer market). I would agree that a 2TB 960 Pro has become significantly (over 60%) more affordable for the past 1 (one) year since it has become widely available for purchase.

You are right, it is just USD 1.2918 per gigabyte these days and is surely "affordable" to allow an RAID 0 array for such an Adobe waste (just USD 2.5836 / 1GB for 2x 2TB drives, just "a few dollars" - not a big deal).

Mind you, some simple fact based math for a 0:48:14:09 movie [1920x1080, 29.97 fps, AAC 320 kbps 48 kHz, Stereo]:

Adobe MOV: 253.3 GB [Ae render time 5 hours @ 8 CPUs, 8GB RAM] - amount/quality of RAM / CPU / GPU makes no difference for the output speed of the Adobe products, field tested;

Adobe MP4: 17GB estimated (50.00 Mbps target/max H.264 conversion with AME) [conversion time 1 hour 35 minutes or 95 minutes on top of the 5 hours above];

ffmpeg MP4: 1.7GB (automated mov -> mp4 conversion at original quality / kb/s:4665.00 without any manual clicks whatsoever - just sh ffmpeg -i input.mov -qscale 0 output.mp4 with a simple event listener for *.mov files) [conversion time 33 minutes];

That basically means I have to spend 1 (one) and a half hours more and use 1488% more space (253/17*100) with the same Adobe suite to complete the same task due to the "upgrade", which you have no choice to avoid and/or revert.

ffmpeg is 10 times more efficient and 33/95*100=34.73% faster or AME is 95/33*100=287% or almost three times slower than ffmpeg;

i.e. it took just 1/3 of the time the AME or Adobe Media Encoder did for the same job;

in other words, I can encode 3 (three) same files with ffmpeg one-after-another without multi-tasking while AME encodes just one and save 10 times of space. Save. Ten. Times. Of space. In one third of the time. One. Third. Of the time.

No wonders the Adobe suite is so cheap. You get what you pay for. But I would not pay a single dollar for that waste of my time, the other resources and for such a torture. NONE. ZERO. NADA.

What I really "should" do - is, obviously, NOT use Adobe products even if I would have been paid just for that, there are so many better options to use my time more efficiently.

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Rick+Gerard wrote

If you are out of storage you also have other problems that will adversely affect your projects and cause AE to hang and possibly crash. I suggest you invest a few dollars in an external hard drive. They are extremely affordable and that is where you should be putting your rendered files and storing your source footage.

And by the way, amount/quality of space, RAM, CPU and GPU does not effect the stability of the Adobe suite, including Ae/Pr/AME/whatever. It crashes daily, 2 times on average per virtual machine (VM). I have 8x Windows 7 Ultimate VMs (2 CPUs, 8GB RAM, 65GB HDD each), so that means I have to deal with 12-16 crashes on average per 12-14 hours working day.

Running exclusively 2 VMs with 8CPUs and 32GB RAM each does not reduce the crashing statistics, neither does it increase the speed of the output / rendering time. Nope, it does not.

Running on "bare metal" Windows 10 without virtualization does not reduce amount of crashes. I have tested it on both Intel i7 6700HQ non-ECC and AMD TR 1950X ECC hardware. Adobe suite just crashes and crashes.

I keep Mac mini only for Safari (for testing the output), so did not check, maybe it is more stable there.

PS as I am writing this on a buggy forum's viewport not being able to see the form in which I am typing, there is constantly appearing a message "Your content could not be saved due to an error. You may have been logged out. If this problem persists please contact your system administrator. Click here to refresh this page." multiple times on the bottom of the browser window. [Chromium Version 61.0.3163.100 (Developer Build) built on Debian 9.1, running on Debian 9.2 (64-bit)]

Oh, by the way, after 95 minutes of waiting while AME finishes its conversion task, guess what I got in result?

a 24 BYTES mp4 file and this record in the log file:

+++

Log File Created: 04/19/2018 09:26:05 AM

------------------------------------------

04/19/2018 09:26:05 AM : Queue Started

- Source File: F:\00000\1.mov

- Output File: F:\00000\1.mp4

- Preset Used: Custom

- Video: 1920x1080 (1.0), 29.97 fps, Progressive, 00;48;14;09

- Audio: AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, Stereo

- Bitrate: VBR, 1 pass, Target 50.00 Mbps, Max 50.00 Mbps

- Encoding Time: 01:33:38

04/19/2018 10:59:43 AM : File Encoded with warning

------------------------------------------------------------

File importer detected an inconsistency in the file structure of 1.mp4. Reading and writing this file's metadata (XMP) has been disabled.

Adobe Media Encoder

Could not write XMP data in output file.

------------------------------------------------------------

04/19/2018 10:59:43 AM : Queue Stopped

+++

Thank you, Adobe, for waking me up and opening my eyes wide open.

Thank you so very much.

Roei Tzoref

Legend

when comparing between H.264 in a QT wrapper (in Ae) vs. H.264 as mp4 (in AME), you can get with the QT H.264 up to 10 times file size and poor quality in comparison. here's one example. this was the old H.264 in QT in AE. the only good thing it offered was a way to get an mp4 right in After Effects. now it's completely gone along with other very useful QT Codecs like PNG.

I would recommend using AfterCodecs. it's available in Win and Mac. along with Ae, it just added support for Premiere and AME so you get to stay native in these software and have the option to use this plugin for your Compressed or Lossless needs. it offers much better compressed mp4 than H.264, and also ProRes on Windows for lossless delivery. AfterCodecs - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com it's on 25% discount until 20.04.18.

other than that, using H.264 in AME is your best option for mp4, and for lossless containers - Animation, DNx, Cineform. if you want x.264 you can drag your lossless file to Handbrake which is a free x.264 encoder.

R

Rick Gerard

Correct answer

Community Expert

H.264 files should be in an MP4 container. Apple never did a good job supporting h.264 in a QT container, it was buggy and unreliable, and they are not doing any further development. That is why it was removed. It should have been removed a long time ago.

You should be using the Adobe Media Encoder to render h.264 MP4 files and unless you have expert skills and a thorough knowledge of video formats and compression you should never see the words Custom in a composition setting or a render setting. Just use the presets that match your intended audience and then study up on video formats and compression.

BTW, this question has been asked and answered hundreds of times. Many of those answers are on this forum and they are all the same. Do not use H.264 Quicktime. It's a dead format.

GCIGraphics

Participating Frequently

I disagree Rick, apples suport of quicktime and h.264 was not buggy as was not dead. Its actually still one of the common ways to get a higher quality .Mov file rather than a mp4 that lost some quality. Im not one to just go to save space. I care what my footage looks likes and .MOV with h.264 did a great job of that. it is night and day comparing the h.264 file up agaist all of the presets given for mp4. They should not have removed a working codec. Especially with out adding a replacement. Not a good mood at all.