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mattk36897434
mattk36897434
Participant
April 6, 2018
Answered

Missing quicktime codecs in After Effects

  • April 6, 2018
  • 25 replies
  • 100694 views

Hi Ive recently updated my After Effects and since then I now do not have most of my quicktime codecs, I followed the suggestion on the problem on adobe solutions page: Some QuickTime codecs missing in After Effects

but with no luck. Pls help

      Correct answer Jose Panadero

      Adobe has dropped support for Quicktime 7 in After Effects 15.1 so a lot of legacy codecs will not be available anymore.

      The link you are referencing is very old and not applicable to newer versions of AE.

      25 replies

      Show previous replies
      E
      e2x10
      Participating Frequently
      July 4, 2018

      Thanks Adobe you really made my life miserable

        Kevin J. Monahan Jr.
        Community Manager
        Kevin J. Monahan Jr.Community Manager
        Community Manager
        July 28, 2018

        e2x10,

        Kindly see this response from Dave Merchant for an explanation: Re: Missing quicktime codecs in After Effects

        It's a directive from Apple that we are abiding by. Sorry for the frustration.

        Thanks,
        Kevin

        Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio
        A
        Alek_V
        Inspiring
        September 25, 2020

        Adobe could address this by licensing or buying code from a product like AfterCodecs and incorporating it into After Effects.

        A
        andrew_hildebrand
        Participant
        June 24, 2018

        LearnDev​

        The easiest way to convert as of now, would be just to install a previous version of AE, Premiere, or Media Encoder. You may have to poke around in the settings to make it accessable, but with Creative Cloud, you can install I think any version of AE all the way back to CS6.

        And Animation is just a lossless codec for Quicktime. On a mac it used to be AE's default output, but now you'll have to twirl down the mov codecs to find it.

          LearnDev
          LearnDev
          Participating Frequently
          June 24, 2018

          Thank you Andrew! Thank you for clarifying about the QuickTime animation file. You suggested that I could roll back my Adobe products and I found confirmation in this blog post: Install a previous version of any Creative Cloud application

          I don't know if this will help anyone else, but I ended up using Compressor on Mac to change my QuickTime files to ProRes 4444. Luckily, there were only two files that I needed to convert, but they were used over 150 times in my After Effects file. By the way, I use After Effects in Windows and I edit in Final Cut Pro on Mac (I know, weird).

          I will have to use a previous version of Media Encoder on Windows, as you suggested, next time. Some of my older files have tons of legacy QuickTime files that I will need to convert. Thanks again!

          Dave_LaRonde
          Dave_LaRonde
          Inspiring
          June 24, 2018

          If you revert to, say, CC 2017, you shouldn't have to convert.

          LearnDev
          LearnDev
          Participating Frequently
          June 23, 2018

          Has anyone found a replacement codec for QuickTime files that are transparent (alpha channel)? I have 120 instances of a transparent QuickTime file in After Effects and I'm not sure what format replaces it. Help!

            A
            andrew_hildebrand
            Participant
            June 23, 2018

            Cineform, Animation, ProRes 4444 should all still work for this.

            Dave_LaRonde
            Dave_LaRonde
            Inspiring
            June 23, 2018

            That doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot when your client SPECIFIES a QT in Photo JPEG.  You make a QT in Photo JPEG.  Clients care absolutely nothing about the lack of QT codecs in Adobe software.  Clients want what they specify.

            Adobe has made it a whole lot more difficult and time-consuming to do so. 

            Please be sure to pass on your gratitude to Adobe for making it ever so much easier to do.

            C
            Cymascopic
            Inspiring
            May 31, 2018

            Another thing that sucks about this is that Media encoder seems quite buggy on Windows. sometimes it takes up to 30 mins for a render to connect via Dynamic link, I've begun trailing 3rd party rendering plugins and rendering out to cineform, then converting them to H264 in media encoder, but I should not have to take these unnecessary steps. They should have added H264 to the output module in After Effects before doing this.

            E
            e2x10
            Participating Frequently
            May 23, 2018

            Adobe does not give a — about it's customers... tell me no one thought this would be a problem.. All the stock sights ask for motion jpeg .thanks adobe.

            Moderator Warning: Do not use profanity on these forums. It is against Adobe community guidelines.

            C
            Cymascopic
            Inspiring
            May 23, 2018

            This is so bad! I have project that use videos encoded in the DVX3 codec and premier won't load those files. which means I have to re-encode all those files, I have to waist so much time.

            A
            andrew_hildebrand
            Participant
            May 15, 2018

            This move by Adobe is similar to the kinds of user-bullying that Apple does. It's frustrating for sure. I've chosen not to upgrade for now.

            I'm told that this pluggin does a good job as a work around, for output at least. I don't think it allows you to use mov files as input though.

            AfterCodecs - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com

            And if you're savvy in the Terminal or Command Line, ffmpeg does a great job of converting imag seq to mov.

              Stephen Barrante
              Stephen Barrante
              Inspiring
              May 15, 2018

              I've gotten used to the "brand" pushing the "customers" out of their comfort zones. After all, I've been an Apple customer for 30 years. However, this is one particular instance we wasted time trying to find a work around, until we discovered what the actual cause was, had to backtrack and nearly missed making a hard deadline because we were forced into specific codecs.

              We've learned our lesson many times before to not update software mid-project, this was an instance where we had other issues and were hoping that the update would resolve those problems. However, it created many more.

              Preaching to the choir, but I'll hope for some sort of "use legacy Codec" checkbox in an incremental release.

              D
              Dave Merchant
              Legend
              May 15, 2018

              https://forums.adobe.com/people/Stephen+Barrante  wrote

              Preaching to the choir, but I'll hope for some sort of "use legacy Codec" checkbox in an incremental release.

              The problem there is that the removed codecs are not part of Adobe's codebase, they were obtained by bundling Apple's QT library (which is EOL for security reasons). So either Apple does a complete U-turn and resurrects software that it has categorically said is dead and gone, or Adobe has to recreate everything that Apple wrote, from scratch, without stepping on any patents. Given that it's usually possible to convert affected footage to a standard mezz codec (e.g. ProRes or DNx) using free third-party tools, and that sources of footage are inevitably moving away from the older codecs as new cameras and recorders come to market, I don't see Adobe spending their development budget on that work. Yes of course some people work with lots of old files, or stuff sent by clients who refuse to change, but that's just the cost of legacy; same as people insisting every Word document is saved to RTF or every PSD has to be a TIFF. Just bill them for the time it takes to convert things.

              I'm not defending how Adobe implemented this change, just saying it's not as much of an absolute show-stopper as some of the other gaping holes in AE's functionality (such as zero support for compressed DNGs or scriptable text formatting).

                Stephen Barrante
                Stephen Barrante
                Inspiring
                May 15, 2018

                Combing through the forums to see if there has been any resolution / recommendations on how to solve this. Right now we've chosen not to upgrade – but it looks like were going to end up having to keep an older version of Media Encoder so we can use HAP and DXV3 codecs, for many of our exports. It's an incredibly frustrating extra step, because we'll need to kick the files out at ProRes first and then re-process.

                Even more frustrating is that this was just arbitrarily done, with no streamlined work around. We spend the better part of a day troubleshooting this, only to find out the codecs were not supported and downgraded.

                @Adobe thoughts?

                  Dave_LaRonde
                  Dave_LaRonde
                  Inspiring
                  May 15, 2018

                  @ Adobe thoughts?

                  I'll guess Adobe didn't even think beyond its own in-house coding problems surrounding 32-bit codecs. 

                  I'll bet they gave NO REGARD WHATSOEVER to the real-life fact that its users -- i.e. the people who rent the software -- have their own paying customers who expect work delivered in a specified media container and a specified codec.  It matters not one whit to those paying customers whether Adobe dropped support; they want what they specified.

                  So Adobe renters are forced into extra time-consuming steps to deliver what their clients specify.  In short, Adobe cut its own customers off at the knees. 

                  Be sure to say "Thank You" to them.

                    E
                    e2x10
                    Participating Frequently
                    May 15, 2018

                    This is a really dumb move Adobe

                      B
                      borzoff
                      Participant
                      April 30, 2018

                      What are you doing then? we have the work of the whole studio got up, due to the fact that we have the whole pipeline to a third-party codec for quicktime built (HAP) it can not be replaced, it's the only one that normally works with video at 10k. Return it as it was. it is impossible to work with your products.

                        Jose Panadero
                        Community Expert
                        Jose PanaderoCommunity Expert
                        Community Expert
                        April 30, 2018

                        Then the only you can do is to downgrade your AE to version 15.0.1. Avoid installation of AE 15.1

                        B
                        borzoff
                        Participant
                        April 30, 2018

                        This is an impudent offer from you, or maybe it's worth it to drive out your optimizers and hire people who really want to develop the product? or at least ask people who use AE what they need. and then in the last updates of the trap of useless junk and cut out the necessary things ..

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