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ScubaBadger
Inspiring
June 19, 2013
Answered

After Effects CC (CS7)

  • June 19, 2013
  • 11 replies
  • 71293 views

Attempting to render out - this new incarnation of After Effcts no longer offers h.264 and h.264 Blu Ray.. Is this intended?

h.264 - mp4 output is the one we've always used most - and now completely gone...?

Searching for it - I found an h.264 container under the f4v output settings which I've never used. To get an h.264 out - must I go there?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Szalam

    Werlien wrote:

    How do I access this I looked in preferences under output and did not find it? If you need to be able to export these formats directly from After Effects, you can re-enable them by setting the preference Show Deprecated Formats In Output Module Settings in the Output preferences category.

    The Show Deprecated Formats In Output Module Settings is only available in After Effects CC. That option was removed in After Effects CC 2014.

    Even before they removed the option (but especially now), here's what you should be doing: using Adobe Media Encoder to create H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV videos from After Effects

    However, if you really want to encode h.264 directly out of AE (which is not recommended), you can choose to Save As CC in CC 2014 and open your projects in the older version and do it there.

    11 replies

    K
    kyoshiphoto
    Participant
    September 19, 2017

    It is annoying I have to go through the encoder. It adds an extra step and wastes a lot of time. My clients ant quick edit for social media posting an this adds a considerable amount of time.

    Szalam
    Community Expert
    SzalamCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 19, 2017

    kyoshiphoto  wrote

    It is annoying I have to go through the encoder. It adds an extra step and wastes a lot of time. My clients ant quick edit for social media posting an this adds a considerable amount of time.

    One could argue that it saves time because you can send your AE comp to the render queue and start working on the next project while that one renders in the background. You can actually get more done in less time.

    edward_tilsley
    edward_tilsley
    Participant
    February 10, 2016

    Yup, can only agree with all the negative points here. Adobe's excuse for removing this option from AE is that 'its a lot of work to maintain it'. !?!?! WTF that's why we subscribe ££$$££ DO THE WORK LAZY SODS !!

    Szalam
    Community Expert
    SzalamCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 10, 2016

    edward.tilsley@uk.fujitsu wrote:

    Adobe's excuse for removing this option from AE is that 'its a lot of work to maintain it'. !?!?! WTF that's why we subscribe ££$$££ DO THE WORK LAZY SODS !!

    Your anger is justified, but it's pointed at the wrong people.

    I don't think you understood what the After Effects team were saying. They weren't saying that it was too hard and they didn't feel like it; they were saying that doing the work on the MP4 encoding would make it so they couldn't do work on other things. There are only so many person-hours in a day and the AE team is tiny. Like, really tiny. This picture from the After Effects World Conference in 2014 shows nearly the entire team, including software engineering, quality engineering, marketing, UI design, and product management.

    Personally, I would rather them let the Adobe Media Encoder team handle media encoding issues so the AE team can work on making AE faster and better. They are in the middle of completely re-writing AE's core code so that it can be properly multithreaded. Faster interactivity, faster workflow, faster previews, and faster renders! Any time taken away from doing that to work on something that we can already do (with a slight change in workflow) seems like a waste of time to me.

    Although, in a perfect world, the After Effects team wouldn't be so tiny and they could do both things. Anyway, the issue isn't laziness on the part of the After Effects team; the issue is staffing priority on the Adobe corporate side.

    edward_tilsley
    edward_tilsley
    Participant
    February 10, 2016

    Yes understand this. Come on Adobe get recruiting. There are fantastic products.. but upgrades shouldnt introduce new workflow work-arounds & throttled performances.

    M
    magdesign_ch
    Participant
    January 8, 2016

    I had to switch back to Adobe CS6 to keep on working fast....

    But this can't be the solution!

    Sure I can click "Add to Adobe Media Encoder..." then AME loads up, which takes nearly 5 Minutes..... then I select there h.264 with the exact same settings as in CS6......

    and do you know what... the quality is bad and the render time much longer.... It seems that the h264 module is completely new and coded in bader quality.... (try it and compare it yourself, its massiv!)

    I like the thing that AME renders in background and I can keep on working in AE, but please please make the h264 codecs better!!!

    Please Adobe guys, I'm sure all AE users would love it, its an important feature for us.

      E
      enesbk
      Participant
      January 20, 2016

      You are quite right.

      All practicality destroyed. For those who work quickly, very bad bi method.

      They must put back c6 method!!!

      Sory my bad İnglish.

      TalkMotion
      TalkMotion
      Inspiring
      July 17, 2015

      I also find it surprising that this function has been removed. mp4 is the most common video format out there and h.264 is a great codec. Much more widely used than avi; and being able to export a decent low res proof shouldn't require another software. Where do I make a feature/function request?

        P
        pavetheway00
        Participant
        February 28, 2015

        Exporting h264 natively from after effects is 'not recommended?' But funneling our longstanding render workflows - where we were able to duplicate outputs and export previews and masters simultaneously - into separate steps that involve a broken piece of software is recommended? And for whom? For the benefit of users who are easily 'confused' that these options would be available in both AE and AME? I thought this was a software package for professionals. Thanks, Adobe, for rescuing me from a workflow that had been both efficient and effective.

          D
          Dr Missile
          Known Participant
          November 26, 2014

          Hey guys, great job at adding more steps for simple tasks like outputting low res comps for client approval! I really need Adobe to hold my hand like I'm an imbecile, otherwise I might get a cowwupted wender 'n dat would be weeelie baayad.

            Cendator
            Cendator
            Participant
            August 28, 2015

            I used mp4 for proxy so now I have to use slower PNG sequences. Great stupidity from Adobe

              T
              The_moog
              Participant
              September 18, 2017

              THIS THIS EXACTLY THIS.

              I make loads of low res renders for client review. Using media encoder is just an extra faff and memory hog that I just could do without. It was fine before. It must have taken more effort to take out than leave in, which leads me to think that it's just an effort to force us into the workflow that Adobe wants.  I really don't like Adobe right now.

              A
              AI3DVR00
              Participant
              October 22, 2014

              To tell you the truth AME crashes on me constantly during encoding, so the assertion that H264 direct out of AE is buggy is not quite the whole story.

              Szalam
              Community Expert
              SzalamCommunity Expert
              Community Expert
              October 22, 2014

              We use the Cineform codec here for a lot of our intermediate files. It is pretty fast to encode and is visually lossless. The file size is pretty nice too. I've heard of some folks using the Lagarith codec, but I have no personal experience with it.

              LukeWarmCoffee
              LukeWarmCoffee
              Participant
              October 21, 2014

              So what do people edit in on PC in Premiere Pro on CC? I've been cutting in H264 for years.

              I also have about 40 compositions in AE that for some reason need to be added to AME ONE AT A TIME if I want them in H264 mp4.

              Tim Kurkoski
              Adobe Employee
              Tim Kurkoski
              Adobe Employee
              October 21, 2014

              LukeWarmCoffee wrote:

              I also have about 40 compositions in AE that for some reason need to be added to AME ONE AT A TIME if I want them in H264 mp4.

              You can select multiple compositions in the Project panel in After Effects, then choose Composition > Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue to add all of them at once.

              You can also drag multiple composition icons from the Project panel to the Queue panel in Adobe Media Encoder to add them.

              Once in Adobe Media Encoder, you can Shift+select all of the output items in the Queue panel, then change the Format and Preset drop-down selectors to change the preset for all of the output items at the same time.

              Also, in Adobe Media Encoder 2014.1 (8.1), you can put your After Effects project files into a watch folder. All compositions in the top level of the project (ie., not in a folder) will be encoded to the preset you choose. More detail here and here.

              LukeWarmCoffee
              LukeWarmCoffee
              Participant
              October 21, 2014

              Thanks - but could I get a general "This is a good standard codec/compression" to export from AE if I plan on editing the AE composition within Premiere? I don't want to always have to import an AE composition in Premiere, and I really don't want to always have to queue everything up in AME.

              For example - if I do a background in AE and I want to put titles over it within Premiere - I don't want to have to render the background fresh every single time. I'd rather render it from AE once at a high enough quality that I both play it in real time within Premiere as well as just render it out quickly within Premiere.

              I used to use MP4 for that, always, never without any problems in the last 5 or so years. I tried making MOV m264 files last night and they take longer to render and look like garbage. I've searched online but keep coming up short and I'd expect this is an easy problem with an easy answer.

              Thoughts? Thanks

              S
              ScubaBadgerAuthor
              Inspiring
              October 20, 2014

              Szalam,

              thanks for the chime in and info.

              Rendering out of Media Encoder is a good suggestion - but how long is that going to be with us?

              Why is it you say "not recommended" for rendering out of AE - that is after all why Adobe provide rendering resource and links within AE?

              A
              AI3DVR00
              Participant
              October 14, 2014

              Disappointing.  I miss rendering mp4 direct from render queue


              "There have been many problems with the H.264 and MPEG-2 exporters in After Effects. The exporters in Adobe Media Encoder (AME) didn't have these problems, and the team that works on AME is continuing to improve these exporters."

              - personally i have had no problems with the H264 encoding, whereas I get regular crashes with AME encoding.

              - if i want to push out a quick comp i was able to do it rapidly from Render queue, now i have to wait and reset all the paths etc in AME

              danimaljenkins
              danimaljenkins
              Participant
              October 16, 2014

              Agreed. We always render mass quantities of .mp4 files from the render queue. That's the format needed. I haven't updated AE since we found out that this has been removed. WTF Adobe?! Put this back.

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