Estimate the file size before rendering?

[MattMiklas]

Hi-

Using AE CC 2017 and would like to know what the approximate file size of the .MOV file will be before I go about rendering it.

Trying to keep a 4k video under 5GB, using AE to animate a time-lapse just in case that's relevant. Doing this on a Mac Mini from 2014, and as you can guess, figuring this out by trial and error would take an inordinate amount of time.

Thanks in advance.

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

It's not possible, least of all for compressed formats, regardless of what compression method they actually use. Even Media Encoder only offers a crude guess based on bit rates which doesn't hold up most of the time. The longer the clip, the stronger deviation and that is dependent on teh image content in the first place. Clips with identical durations and resolutions can still result in drastically different fiel sizes jsut based on what they actually contain. So no, that's a pipedream. All you can do is build on your own experiences and guesstimate based on your settings.

Mylenium

[Roei Tzoref]

that's a nice idea, get the estimation before you render (same guess estimation you get when you actually render). as M says, it's many time inaccurate but if you have the same manipulation over time, and in some cases you do, I find it pretty accurate.

unfortunately this feature only exists in AME for compressed formats. you could do what most of us do - Render and see, and if it's wrong you stop the render.

and you could ask for this feature here:  Feature Request/Bug Report Form