Which settings to have a professionnal rendering in ae ?

[Flo the apprentice]

What settings should be used to have a smooth and clean rendering of its animation?

Which setting is the best to look professionnal ? 

Is 4K, 8K that different, 60 fps  game changer ?  

Thank you !

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

Sorry, but that's pretty much a non-question. The output specs are defined by what you use your actual clip playback and there's no "One fits all". You can create a brilliant 4k clip at 60 FPS and it will still look terribel when uploading it e.g. to Facebook where it will be mangled and recompressed heavily. Likewise, there can be all sorts of issues when viewing content on mobile devices in non-standard formats. So for what it's worth, you can only tackle this on an "as needed" basis and you have to reconsider your options for every new project. Creating a well-designed HD animation still is sufficient for many uses and whether or not going the extra mile for 4k and beyond is an open question...

Mylenium

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

Let me throw in my 2¢.

The human eye has a very hard time telling the difference between 12 frames per second and 30. Unless you pause a video, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between 24, 30, or 60 fps. 60 fps video files are twice as big as 30 fps video and require twice the bandwidth because the data rate is twice as high. Streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo will send lower frame rates to viewers if they determine that the bandwidth is marginal. They will also scale down a 4K video to HD or even smaller if there is insufficient bandwidth. Broadcasters will send 60 fps video for some sports coverage, and there is a slight advantage if you are looking for specific motion in a fast-moving play, and the slow-motion replay is better. Any advantage of high frame rate video is quickly lost on most viewers. They spent $$$$$$ on Avatar Water, and it's 24 fps for all but a few of the action scenes. I saw it the other day on the best screen, and I actually missed some of the motion blur on those action scenes. That's a personal preference. 

4K is about as much resolution as you can get on any screen, nearly double that of most computer monitors and mobile devices. It has an advantage in post production because there's more information in the frame, but most of the viewers of your project are not going to get a 4K product. A bigger advantage of 4K and even 8K is that most professional gear can produce 10 or 12-bit images in log color space. This gives you much more data to work with when trying to manipulate color and pixels. 8K files are not twice as big as 4K files; they are 4 times bigger. If you have the budget for the gear and the computer power to work with 8K files, then you have a better chance of drastically manipulating the images. 

A professional rendering can be an H.264 MP4 or an EXR Image sequence. It all depends on what you are going to do with the shot. 8-bit formats, like H.264, are not intended to be used as source footage for editing. The Render Queue/Media Encoder default High-Quality output produces a professional 8-bit file. I've edited my preferences so the bit depth is higher because everything I render using the Render Queue is going into an NLE for further editing and processing. 

I hope this helps.  There is no magic bullet. You have to understand your audience, delivery method, video formats, and even audio settings. Until you are an expert, use the default settings for comps and rendering. You can't get a better result on YouTube by fiddling with the Media Encoder controls than you will get using the H.264 YouTube presets that match your comps frame size.