Trouble Rendering video from Comp that Includes Imported Video

Report · Mar 14, 2023

Hi Adobe Community!

I am using after effects to render a Lyric Video for a Hip-Hop Artist. I am not too familiar with troubleshooting with After Effects. I have successfully rendered different kinds of videos in the past but I never ran into this problem:

I have an mp4 video I imported as a layer. Its a simple video using animated Lyrics rendered in Unreal Engine 5, with white text and a plain black background. When I watch the composition preview in the editor, the whole video looks correct. Then when I render an MP4 through render queue, something bugs out. The video skips to a frame that either from later on or earlier, and freezes there. I retried the render several times, and the same result came out. Does anyone have any ideas on where to start troubleshooting in my project?

The only lead I have is the warning I sometimes get about my graphics driver being incompatible. The GPU is an RTX 3060ti

I'd appreciate any help I can get! If uploading pictures would help I can do that.

Report · Mar 14, 2023

MP4 video is highly compressed, takes a boatload of processing power to decode, and is not now and never should be a production format. You'll have better luck if you drop the MP4 video in the Media Encoder and render a ProRez production master. You should also make sure that your render uses an industry-standard frame rate.

Report · Mar 15, 2023

Hey Rick!

Can you tell me more about ProRes? I checked it out online but I'm having difficulty understanding it. Is ProRes a file format? From what I've read its designed by Apple. Does that mean QuickTime format should be the one I use? Let me know if you can help me find that setting in AME. Thanks!

Report · Mar 15, 2023

Open Media Encoder. Drag or browse to find your problem MP4 file. From the Menu, choose QuickTime first and then ProRez 422LT from the Preset menu, then pick a location and click in the upper right to render.

Then dive into the User Guide or choose the Learn Workspace and so a web search for "standard video formats" and learn a little about video production and your software. You are fiddling with professional software designed for use by professionals to create effects like the ones used in this year's Academy Awards Winner best picture winner, "Everything Everywhere All at Once." Yup, the visual effects for that masterpiece were created by five guys using After Effects. A tool that powerful is going to take some study to master. It is not a click-to-play app.

Report · Mar 14, 2023

Transcode the source video to a regular MP4 and turn off hardware accelerated decoding in AE.

Mylenium

Report · Mar 15, 2023

Hi Mylenium, I'm not sure I follow what you mean by regular MP4. As for hardware accelerated decoding, are you talking about the GPU usage setting in Preferences? I already turned that one off, because I figured using GPU processing would cause problems, especially after that warning it gave me about the NVIDIA Driver. Do you think you could be more specific on how to do that? Thanks!