Add back rendering support for H264 codec directly out of AE

[vanessaa28291406]

Around 2012 you removed the option for rendering a .mp4 file directly out of AE. Please add it back. The work around is to either render in a different codec and compress that in media encoder, or to launch the render directly from media encoder from AE (which is extremely slow and cumbersome, especially when you have large/complex project files). Not sure why removing functionality seemed like a good idea at the time...?

[sam yousefian]

SERIOUSLY!!! PLEASE ADD IT BACK!

[ronald leew2184168]

Media Encoder: Slow To Launch. Slow to add items into the Queue. Slow to change encoding presets/setting. Non-Intuitive to change render quality and image sequence naming in Media Encoder. Inconsistency between AE Render Queue features/settings and ME. Currently using ME is a big time suck and kills momentum. Please return the H264 feature to AE.

[DZMar10]

As Adobe Media Encoder doesn't render the same way After Effects does this is a critical feature. If whatever causes AME to render differently than after effects was fixed I would be OK with just using Adobe Media Encoder.

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911308-media-encoder/suggestions/34857124-fix-whatever-caus...

[yeah_corey]

Please, add back a simple light codec like h264. Preferably h264. AME is garbage and I would never use it except I have to now. The decision to remove this was ludicrous. No here we are 8 years later. Clients and studios still ask for h264. I have to wait for AME to get its **** together. It’s slow. It’s awkward. The default settings are trash. It feels like a 30 year old program. Just let me render from the render queue and trim the fat for crissakes. Get all of those effects and codecs no one uses out of there.

[defaultcl3zuh3yszo4]

For all things good, put quicktime output of H264 directly back into After Effects!

[itsi75]

Please do this, ME is so slow to launch and any rendered frames in your comp in AE don't carry over like how they do in Ae renderer

[Steve5D7C]

Seriously, it seems like both the CG software companies I rely on (Adobe and Autodesk) literally go out of their way to screw their users with every new release. What absolute idiot thought it was a good idea to remove a whole bunch of formats and codecs from AE in this way? Not only does this complicate and slow down the output process, but Media Encoder absolutely sucks, and furthermore your render settings, file name, file format, codec, and output path now NO LONGER GET SAVED WITH YOUR AE PROJECT. This was my workflow for almost two decades -- save the project file with render module (or sometimes multiple output modules) so that you could always retrace your output steps, often a necessity in the professional world. But, apparently Adobe knows and cares nothing about the actual world of professional artists and animators. I really wonder who they think their user base is?

[lflegg]

I cannot believe you've removed this feature.
I'm currently trying to export via AME which I don't want to have to do and it's saying it's failed to communicate with AME. I've tried updating everything via Adobe Cloud. I just don't want this today. I just want the quick and simple way, how it used to work.

[krisztian kis]

Hi Luke,

I started using the Voukoder codec, it adds every format I needed to AE and has an easy installer. The codec is free and helped a lot for me.


https://github.com/Vouk/voukoder
https://www.voukoder.org/forum/thread/783-downloads-instructions/

[Seb James]

This would be so useful, I'd love just to be able to output as a high or medium quality H264 file straight from AE, without needing to worry about if Media Encoder is going to render it properly, or without having to render a .mov to then convert.

[danw84]

I know this feature was requested back in 2018 but in 2022 it's more important than ever now that AE to ME dynamic link no longer works. Exporting Prores from AE and transcoding in ME is a time consuming process.
It is also an annoying step considering that we used to have the functionality to export MP4's directly from After Effects.

[Frank_B]

Still waiting for this to be solved.

It's faster to render out MOV directly from AE then convert it to MP4 in AME
than render out MP4 from AME (which often gets clogged and can't even finish the process).

EDIT:
I just found a solution for $20 there is a plugin called Anubis that export MP4 straight from AE.

[nubnubbud]

so far as I can tell, this is a simple case of petty tyranny.
There is a standard for light format lossy file sharing, it is not adobe's.
Adobe therefore removes support for it, but not their own, which is worse in every manner, including support, maturity, level of integration, and so on.

Adobe. your filetypes are trash. make them better or stop splashing around in file spec gene pool, you're messing it up for those of us who actually need performant programs. we know you don't care because you never use these programs internally, and it shows.

[Heathenlamb]

I cannot overstate what a massive PIA it was when Adobe removed direct H264 MP4 encoding from AE.

Putting in back in would be the single BIGGEST request I would have for AE. Granted I work in a pretty niche animation industry but MP4 rendering is integral to what I do and removal added all sorts of headaches to out daily workflow

[Heathenlamb]

I cannot overstate what a massive PIA it was when Adobe removed direct H264 MP4 encoding from AE.

Putting in back in would be the single BIGGEST request I would have for AE. Granted I work in a pretty niche animation industry but MP4 rendering is integral to what I do and removal added all sorts of headaches to out daily workflow

[sam yousefian]

Adobe is trash for removing this and they should be publicly shamed.

HSSSSSS, SHAME, SHAME, SHAME.

But seriously. Why are you such degenerates?

[pentagramwookie]

This is super important. If this can't be fixed at least remove Frame.io from After Effects and put it in Media Encoder, it makes no sense to send a gigantic file for review. I'm not going to upload a one-minute 10GB video file for review from Frame.IO, makes no sense.

The workarounds to send an H.264 via Frame.io are beyond annoying at this point.

[Joosst]

A tip for everyone on a mac: export it as ProRes from AE (that's by far the quickest export anyway), and then open that file in Quicktime. Save it as 1080p (or whatever) from there, and Quicktime will convert it to h264 blazingly fast (much faster than AE could ever do, because Quicktime is so optimized for Apple's hardware). I've been doing this for years and it's actually a pretty decent workflow.

[autokroma]

"We are very happy to announce that starting with After Effects (Beta) 23.0x11, H.264 is now available as an option in the Output Module Settings dialog allowing you to encode to H.264 directly from the AE Render Queue.
"

Great news !

[JohnColombo]

We are very happy to announce that starting with After Effects (Beta) 23.0x11, H.264 is now available as an option in the Output Module Settings dialog allowing you to encode to H.264 directly from the AE Render Queue.

More information on the Beta builds and rendering H.264 is available on the After Effects (Beta) forums: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/feature-focus-exporting-h-264-from-the... ( https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/feature-focus-exporting-h-264-from-the... )

Thank you for all your input on this. Please give the Beta a try and let us know how this feature is working for you.

[JohnColombo]

Hi everyone,

We are extremely pleased to announce that After Effects 2023 (version 23.0) supports rendering H.264 video directly in the Render Queue, along with other highly-requested improvements like Selectable Track Mattes, new Composition Presets, and much more. Full details are available here: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/whats-new.html 

Thanks again for adding your votes to this request,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[krisztian kis]

Thanks, this is excellent news!

--
'..', 0_0 ,'..'

[vanessaa28291406]

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING! Even though it took a while... (I think I wrote this circa 2017). But either way, THANK YOU!

[prowl]

@JohnColombo Great. Many thanks.  How about H.265 with Alpha ( in AE and ME ) 

Find it crazy there is no lightweight Tranparent file formate export.  Used to be able to do that with FLV.

[JohnColombo]

@prowl Our Formats team does have this on their list for the future. Please make a new Ideas thread for that specific request when you can in order to keep the conversation focused.

Cheers,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team