Is it possible to render longer videos with higher resolutions in after effects?

[Chandan Rajdeep Mohanty]

So, this is something I wanted to ask from a long time (from 2014 to be precise). I just wanted to know if it is possible to render higher resolutions like 4k and longer videos like 8 minutes, 10 minutes etc in after effects.

I have seen countless tutorials, web articles and a lot of things in which the YouTubers or tutors never go above 1920x1080 and 10 sec of time.

I was thinking if it is possible to render as I mentioned above or not if we have a PC with good enough or great components. I am going to build my life's first ever PC soon as my old i3 3rd Gen laptop died last year and this is my upcoming rig's specs-

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

NVIDIA RTX 3090

32GB 3600MHz CL18 RAM

Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe

Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVMe

So, as you can see this is fairly powerful PC. I know it can do great renders with fairly lowest possible time but just wanted to know if it's possible to render higher resolutions with longer time on after effects or not, as I have never seen anyone doing it. Not in front of me, neither anyone in internet.

Thanks in advance

[nishu_kush]

Hi Chandan,

Thanks for writing in.

You haven't seen anyone working on 8 or 10 minutes Compositions because After Effects is usually used to create short-duration shots. After Effects works differently if compared to an NLE like Premiere Pro (which is designed to work on long duration projects). I think After Effects can export 8 to 10 minutes long comps but if you've used any resource-intensive effects on the project, it could take a long time to export. Hence (as an After Effects user), exporting the project in several parts in a lossless format and combining them later would be a better choice.

I wonder what kind of projects you'll be working on. 

Hope it helps.

Thanks,

Nishu

[Chandan Rajdeep Mohanty]

I am going to work on mostly creating audio visualisers and VFX shots (i.e.- avengers scatter effect, some anime effect recreation like kamehameha from Naruto anime, and other possible VFX scene) but it was only a doubt I had so I asked.

But I can't do every work at the same time. So, the duration is going to be short but resolution are going to be 4k (3840x2160) shot in iPhone or if I created something like audio visualisers then they are also going to be made in 4k resolution (3840x2160)

Thanks for the reply sir

[Rick Gerard]

Rendering using After Effects is slower than rendering in Premiere Pro. On some systems, your render time could increase by as much as 10 times.

After Effects is not a video editing app. It is designed to create shots and short sequences that cannot be created in an NLE like Premiere Pro. Trying to edit a movie in After Effects is cumbersome, slow, difficult, a pain in the neck, but you can do it if you really want to. Just be prepared for render failures because of some effect you added in shot 46 or lack of system resources.

Music Visualizers are a dime a dozen. If you want to easily create this kind of video explore the web. There are a bunch of real-time and near-real-time solutions out there that have a lot more options and are a lot easier to use. 

Most of your audience won't see any 4K comps you create in 4K because YouTube, Vimeo, and all other social media platforms re-compress your 4K video into at least 3 streams, and they deliver the one that fits the available bandwidth. The same thing goes for 60fps video. Almost no one can tell the difference between 29.97 (30) and 60, the file sizes are at least twice as big, the re-compressed lower frame rate files that YouTube streams to your audience are compressed with a sledgehammer so the quality suffers. Make sure you really need the 60fps movie.  60fps is a waste of file size and bandwidth for music visualizers and almost all live action videos. 

If you are adding things to game footage I strongly suggest that you cut up the game footage and only process the frames that you are going to modify in After Effects in your comp. I work on a lot of long-form videos with a lot of visual effects.  I recently worked on a 10-minute video that had about 80 effects shots. Every effect shot was a separate comp, most were less than 7 seconds, and one of them was only 20 frames. The comps were all rendered to a visually lossless production format and placed above the original footage in a Premiere Pro sequence. That's how you work efficiently.

[Chandan Rajdeep Mohanty]

Greetings sir, thanks for the info. Why everyone says after effects rendering is slow? I mean working in a PC having Ryzen 9 5950X (16 Cores 32 Threads) and graphics card like RTX 3090 (24GB VRAM) is going to be very slow and laggy is kinda unbelievable. I can understand this for people having GT 750Ti (one of my friend does) and other cards which are old. But for current and next gen components, I don't think everything is still going to be slow.