Clarification on What Gets Saved (Regarding Project Panel, Timeline, & Final Render)

Question

Scenario: Finally Ready to Do a Final Render after 4 months of working on a project. It is more of a video presentation, than one animated graphic. Needing a bit of clarification so that I don't cause any missing files, problems, etc. Better safe than sorry in my book. Questions (all related):  Are the Project Panel Files simply a reference to what is saved on hard drive?  When I save my project, does it simply save edits of these in the Timeline, which require the harddrive containing original source file and project itself to remain? (If Project Panel files are not on computer the timeline has nothing to work with right?...at least until a final rendering?) Does Rendering Final Comp include anything unused in ‘Project Panel’? When I perform a final render, in order to produce my final video product, will only what is both displayed and heard in accordance to the timeline be saved into this new file?Is it recommended to save a project file and a render file? Is there anything else one should be aware of before performing a final render of my first AE project?     (Simply trying to learn and try to make all my questions as clear as possible, so please refrain from any snobby remarks. Thank you very much to anyone who may be knowledgable on this matter. &#128578; )

Rick Gerard · Accepted Answer

If you have been working on a project for 4 months and have not been rendering and saving the pieces of your comps, you are making a terrible mistake. Here are some things you should consider:

After Effects calculates every pixel on every layer every time it renders. Renders from After Effects always take longer than renders from Premiere Pro. Renders through the Adobe Media Encoder also take longer than they do when you render a project from Premiere Pro because the Media Encoder will open another copy of After Effects in the background and use that for rendering.

The wisest workflow for complex projects is to render an intraframe (not MPEG or MP4) DI or digital intermediate of each comp you complete using a mezzanine codec (visually lossless). Good options are ProRez, DNxHD (or HR), image sequences, and other visually lossless codecs. The final editing, sound mixing, and even color grading should be done in Premiere Pro or even Davinci Resolve, or your favorite NLE.

After Effects is a compositing, motion graphics, and visual effects app designed to create shots and short sequences. It is not a video editing app and trying to use AE to produce a final long form video is not only an inefficient use of the tool, it is dangerous. The likelihood of a render failing goes up geometrically as the length of the comp increases.

As for what gets saved, Nothing but the compositions you create, the structure of the Project Panel, any render settings you may have saved in the Render Queue that you have not deleted. No footage, no other assets, no audio files. There is nothing in an AEP but links to any source footage, images or audio files you may have used and the things you created in After Effects. If you need to back those things up or collect then there is a tool you can find in the File/Dependencies/Collect Files... menu. It gives you the option of putting copies of all of your assets in a Footage folder and saving the AEP file on the drive of your choice. It can also eliminate all unused assets from this file.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

Mrtn Ritter · Answer

Regarding your questions:

1. The footage in the project panel is a link to the acutal file. This file is on your harddrive, external hard drive, NAS or even Cloud. You can use the search bar, click on the little triangel and filter for "missing footage" in order to make sure, all files are available. When opening a project, AE also checks for "offline" footage and will prompt if so.

2. The timeline contains references to the project items. Project items themselfs are references to the actual files. In this way, your timeline keeps all edits, effects, keyframes... all your work, even if the actual source files are not available anymore. In order to safe a project and restore it on another location (another computer), you need the project file along with all used footage files. There is a menu option to export the whole project. AE will gather all source footage in a new folder, relink all items to the new location and safe this modified project file beside the collected footage. This package is safe to hand out or move everywhere.

3. You are only rendering one composition. This comp can include other comps (so called precomps), or footage or other kind of layers. This way, the rendering will only contain what you actually added to the main-comp. You can clean up your project, too (https://www.actionvfx.com/blog/how-to-tidy-up-a-messy-after-effects-project).

4. Yes, this is pretty much what is going on during rendering. AE takes all your work from the compostion you added to the render queue and make a video out of it. In detail, AE ifself isn't good at creating video files, therefore the intended workflow is to add the comp to Media Encoder in order to create the video file. But still, AE creates frames which AME put into the video file.

5. Not clear to me. You should always safe and keep your project file and since rendering may take a long time, it's worth to safe and keep a master video file. In my workflow, I rendered my AE work as image sequence, re-imported this sequence into AE and added all the audio and exported this as video file. I always kept the image sequence, since it was high quality footage. If a client requested the video in a different quality or size, I just needed to export the comp with the image sequence and audio again, which took just a few minutes.

There is no need to make a render-copy of the project file - if this is what you mean. You can just render your main comp, no matter how much (unused) footage is included in your project. After rendering, you can keep editing your project and render a new version if necassary. Rendering is often the last step in the whole work, but it is also no big deal.

6. You should safe your project, but AE will also auto safe before rendering. You should make sure to add the correct comp to render queue. If you are willing to render an image sequence, you should select PNG of TIFF and a destination and you are good to go. Close all other apps not in need and don't worry if rendering takes very long.

If you are shooting for a video file directly, add the comp to the render queue and then add it to AME. There you can set the format and codec or just preset for youtube, vimeo and others. Again, it may take a long time.

Sometimes, during final rendering, issues get revealed which are in the project already. This happens if the user previews its work in lower resolutions. During rendering, AE computes all effects at highest resolution and best quality. This is demanding. It can happend, that an error will stop the rendering at a certain frame, because the computer run out of ressources to comput the effect. If such a thing is happending, make a new post.

*Martin

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