Best process for exporting video tiles for video wall grid

[Dan Niemi]

I need to provide 16 1920x1080 files that will comprise a video wall. The video is a 15 second animation. I've exported a mov of the entire 7680x4320 file, then reimported that into AE and split into 16 compositions, which I've sent to Adobe Media encoder to render out final h264 mp4 files. This works, but I feel like I might be rerendering footage unnecessarily or inefficiently.  Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks!

[Dave_LaRonde]

It's hard to say.  What does your client require?  That's the ultimate guide.

[Dan Niemi]

Thanks for your response, and sorry for my lack of clarity. Here are detailed delivery specs:

.mp4/h.264/1920x1080/square pixels/progressive/10Mbps Target, 121Ma/VBR 1 pass/profile:main/29.97 fps

I need to provide 16 separate files that will be arranged in a 4x4 grid. (a1,a2,a3,a4,b1,b2....etc)

My assumption is that it will work best to render an intermediate file using the default lossless settings (animation format)

rather than my layered composition. But I'm still learning the various after effects rendering options, and trying to develop a good process to save render time and streamline the grindy parts.

[Szalam]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Dan+Niemi  wrote

My assumption is that it will work best to render an intermediate file using the default lossless settings (animation format)

You could use Cineform or DNxHR instead of the default lossless settings for your intermediate file. It may (or may not) render faster and the file size may (or may not) be smaller.

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

There are two ways to do what you're doing.

One is what you did.

The other way would be to nest your massive comp into the smaller comps and just render them the smaller comps (rather than rendering one big comp, and then bringing the video into AE and making smaller videos with the rendered file).

I'm honestly not sure which way would be faster. You'd have to test.

[Dan Niemi]

Thanks! I'll test it out a bit.

One other way that I'm testing is to crop in media encoder. It seems to output more quickly since it renders out multiples at a time from the same source. I do have to go in and manually set the crop zones for each region, but I think you can crops save as a preset, so I'd just need to do it once.

[Szalam]

That's a good idea! I haven't messed with that feature of AME before. Let us know if it's the solution because it sounds pretty good.

[Dan Niemi]

Yeah, cropping in encoder worked well! I just needed to remember to also change the output video settings to the resolution of my crop (1920x1080). The first time I ran it I still had it on match source so the resolution was off.