Inspiring

Question

Correct and Efficient way to export project

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
June 24, 2019
2 replies
1069 views

Hello forum.

I have been doing a lot of research on how to export correctly a project, sufficiently with loseless quality and small size file.

I saw an informative video, which demonstrated how to set up for render, but instead rendering within AE, the project gets exported and rendered in Adobe Media Encoder.

The file size was dramatically downsized 1/4 compared when rendered within AE. Now my main concern is: is there a catch to why the file size is decreased but it maintains the quality when done withing Media Encoder, and why does AE bloat up the file size so much? And 1000s of videos on Youtube are suggesting people

to render/export their projects within AE and not Media Encoder which I personally find incorrect manner of tutorial.

Thank you.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Rameez_Khan

Legend

Hi inquestflash,

sufficiently with loseless quality and small size file

If you want lossless quality, you're packing more data inside your rendered file. On the other hand, if you want a small file size, it's not possible without having to compress your media.

Now my main concern is: is there a catch to why the file size is decreased but it maintains the quality when done withing Media Encoder, and why does AE bloat up the file size so much

I don't think that's necessarily true. It depends on the codec and format you're choosing as Martin mentioned. After Effects has limited codecs in the Render Queue and most of them are uncompressed (lossless), hence they result in bigger file size. Adobe Media Encoder has a variety of codecs and most people render to H.264 (a common format for web) which is highly compressed and results in smaller file size. You can tweak the render settings as per your requirement to find a balance between quality and file size.

And 1000s of videos on Youtube are suggesting people to render/export their projects within AE and not Media Encoder which I personally find incorrect manner of tutorial.

That's not an incorrect manner. It really depends on your requirement.

Hope this helps.

Rameez

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

If you are going to use the footage you create in After Effects as source material in a production pipeline it is very important that you choose visually lossless production formats for the files. The Render Cue is the best option for this kind of rendering. The render Cue also takes better advantage of GPU enhanced effects and is more predictable. If the render is going to take more than a few seconds a frame then it is advisable to render your comp to an image sequence because it is easier to repair failed renders, you never lose any frames that get rendered, and the results are visually lossless. You just have to live with the file sizes.

If you are rendering for distribution then use the Adobe Media Encoder and choose a preset that matches your frame size and distribution platform. For YouTube, use the YouTube presets. For Vimeo use the Vimeo presets. If the platform does not have a preset then dig into their recommendations and set up your renders using the recommended settings. YouTube and Vimeo will re-process your video, compress it again. If you throw a visually lossless or uncompressed file at YouTube, Vimeo, or almost any other streaming service, they will take a sledgehammer and smash your video into their streaming format and you have absolutely no control on how it is going to turn out. It will always look worse than it would if you followed their recommendations. Streaming services also throttle the data depending on the connection. This means that there are several versions of your video stored on their system. If you do not follow their recommendations then you have to take what they give you. If you do follow their recommendations then you can be fairly confident that they will do a decent job of hosting your video.

If you do not have a solid understanding of video formats and compression schemes DO NOT monkey with the presets. It is highly unlikely that you can improve the quality of your video. DO NOT create custom frame sizes or frame rates unless you know exactly what you are doing and you are positive that the new frame sizes and/or frame rates will be compatible with the specific media player you intend to use. If you monkey with the settings, in almost every case, any video encoding software, will resize and modify the output to match the video standards. Absolutely the only format you can choose that do not care what the frame size or frame rate is an image sequence or a hand full of visually lossless video formats. Almost all video formats (codecs) and containers (like MP4) have standards that cannot be changed.

I hope this helps. If you want to increase rendering speed and reduce the time you wait for projects to render I suggest you look into 3rd party rendering solutions. My favorite: Render Garden. There are others, so look around.

Martin_Ritter

Legend

AE is limited when it comes to export - AME support a lot more video formats. I always render to PNG within AE (and RenderGarden) and export the sequence to a video format with AME - but this is only one workflow.

There are so many video formats and codecs, that we can't give you any value advice. It simply depends on your overall workflow and the desired plattform to put the video on.

For example, if you created a video with should be on youtube, you can render through AME as MP4, H.264 with 20MBit/s. But if you are need to put the video back into editing or grading-software, you better render loseloss or DNxHD185x or ProRes4444.

Learn about codecs and containers - you'll need this all the time.

*Martin

Mo Moolla

Legend

Martin when you render out of AE its generally in a "lossless" format which means the quality is high and thus the large file sizes.

I have never seen a Social Media output workflow that would export directly out of AE and then upload onto Youtube etc. The file sizes would be way too big (this is of course dependant on the duration, effects used etc)

AME/PP are the right places to get the file sizes down to acceptable sizes for streaming.

The H.264 codec will work well for you. Compressed but very acceptable quality

Mo

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded