How to Render After Effects Composition Without Creating a 2.2 TB file?

[jfredrickson01]

Hello,

I am trying to use After Effects for the first time to create a waveform visualizer over an image. I've never used After Effects before so I must be doing something wrong when trying to render.

I first tried exporting by "Render > Add to Media Encoder Queue", but nothing happens. Media Encoder opens but nothing gets added to the queue.

I then tried adding to the render queue in After Effects and then clicking gthe "Queue in AME" button from there, which does add it to the Media Encoder queue, but always fails when I click play with the following error:

"Could not read from the source. Please check if it has moved or been deleted."

I then tried just rendering it using After Effects but it always throws up a warning saying the expected file size is more than my remaining disk space so I checked the expected file size and it is 2.2TB. 

How can I either fix the issues with rendering in Media Encoder or figure out how to render it in After Effects without creating a 2.2TB file? It is just a composition of an image with a waveform visualizer on the image. It is 90 min long, but even my 4k footage from the 90 min is only 73GB.

What am I doing wrong? Any advice would be great appreciated. Thanks!

[jfredrickson01]

For what it's worth, I'm also having issues rendering anything from Premiere Pro using Media Encoder. Is the latest version (14.9) broken? I have never had issues with rendering in Media Encoder before. This all started happening this week and I've been using it for years. Don't know when I updated to the latest version as Creative Cloud updates automatically in the background.

[Byron Cortez]

Wow! This is the first time I have heard/read that someone has exported a composition of tremendous length from After Effects, you could do it in parts. However, there is a possibility that you are exporting with the Animation codec and the QuickTime container, you should change to a codec that is of higher compression but of excellent quality such as H.264 or HEVC (H.265) if you don't want to have a huge final file. Could you tell us the details of the codec and container with which you are adjusting the output?

On the other hand, when you launch Adobe Media Encoder you must have a little patience for the composition to appear, it usually takes a little time, especially when it is a complex and long composition.

[P.M.B]

Honestly, what you're doing wrong is trying to use After Effects without having learned how to use After Effects.

[Julian Petschek]

lol

[Julian Petschek]

It honestly doesn't matter how 'big' your original footage is.  If it were a 50mb h264 file but it was 90 minutes long, scaled up to 4k, and then exported as an uncompressed quicktime - you would still end up with a 2.2 TB file.  

That might not be entirely true - but the issue is definitely the codec you are exporting to.  The answer might be to go buy an external harddrive, render your visualizer to that, then compress it using compressor or some other program to be able to play it back.  Or render straight to H264 or something compressed like that, but...    AE is not really meant for rendering a video file that long.

[nishu_kush]

Hi jfredrickson01,

The issue that you're getting with Media Encoder is known. Sorry about that. The good news is, the team is working on it and has already made some changes to the Dynamic link functionality. You can try it out in the beta version of After Effects and Media Encoder. Here's how to install: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/x-productkb/global/creative-cloud-public-beta.html

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Nishu

[Rick Gerard]

If you need a 90-minute music visualizer then After Effects is the wrong tool. I would start by looking here. There are lots of real-time solutions that you could just capture using a screen recorder if you need a movie.

If you want complete creative control then After Effects is probably a good tool, but you would want to break your project up into individual songs and probably have different effects for each verse or even each phrase. You would render all of those effects to a suitable DI (digital intermediate using a visually lossless production codec) then edit the final piece in Premiere Pro. 

If you are trying to render for distribution using the Render Queue, once again, you are using the wrong tool. 

If you are getting Media Encoder failures then something is wrong with your system or the version of AE that you are using. You can always roll back a version or at least a build. Some effects and some types of source footage can cause problems so knowing your complete workflow and seeing what is going on in your timeline is always a help when trying to diagnose problems.