Exporting .mov with h.264 codec

[brunor17619003]

Hey, im having trouble exporting a video  1920x1080px to .mov and using h.264 coedc, After Effects doesn´t allow me to use that codec.

Hope someone can help me!

[Rick Gerard]

h.264 in a MOV container is a bad idea. Apple stopped supporting it a long time ago. You should render an H.264 MP4 using the Adobe Media Encoder. Make sure you pick one of the presets that match your frame size and frame rate. Don't create custom settings unless you really know what you are doing.

[brunor17619003]

A client is asking me to export the video with that especifications, the main reason is that if I use codec Animation the file size its too big, you have any suggestion? I really appreciate your comments. Thanks a lot.

[Rick Gerard]

If the client really needs the movie as h.264 in MOV format then just use the AME to render an MP4 and change the extension. The big problem is rendering to the MOV container. MOV's that are really mp4's playback just fine.

You should also gently educate your client to the face that QuickTime no longer is working on or guaranteeing support for h.264 QuickTime. Also, H.264 is a very lossy intraframe codec that should never be used for further production or archiving. I'd pick a suitable production format for that. The proper format depends on the systems your client has in place. ProRez is good for a Mac, Cineware (free from GoPro) is also a suitable production format. If the video is going directly to the audience then an h,264 MP4 is the most universal format you can find. Any media player will accept the files without problems. Sometimes custom players used for things like animated signage are stuck with h.264 in a MOV container so all you have to do is change the extension to get those players to work. They will never know the difference.

[brunor17619003]

Haha Ok, i´ll do that, sometimes clients are crazy. Thanks so much again for all your help. I really appreciate it.

[tulshyan_praneet · Accepted solution]

It is quite sad that Adobe has removed the H264 codec from After Effects. No matter how buggy or outdated it was, it was by far the most common, most used, fastest, easiest, and lightest lossless compressor. Our clients still ask for .mov or .mp4 in H264 encoding. I had to rollback my after effects to a version before 15.1 to get the settings back to normal. This was a sudden move by Adobe. I found a link here on it - Dropped support for QuickTime 7 era formats and codecs

Until someone has tried other codecs from the new limited list and has an equivalent to H264, I'm not updating my After Effects. I haven't tried directly exporting to AME, but from what I read on forums, it's a lengthier and slower process.

[Rick Gerard]

The AME is not that much slower, in actual fact it saves you time because you don't have to stop working in AE while renders are running. Since the AME was introduced I have been far more productive because I now almost never wait for a render. I just don't. There is no reason to.

H.264 produces much cleaner files and better playback performance when you use Multi-Pass rendering and that was never available through the output module but has always been available in the AME. Not running the latest version of AE is also denying you many improved features that are huge time savers if you do motion graphics, work with masks, do color grading and a bunch of other things. Blaming Adobe for trying to save you from problems encoding files when another manufacturer drops support is a little silly. Not learning and using the best tools for the job is going to eventually leave you behind.

If you are really concerned with delivery time you should spend $100 and buy RenderGarden. It will more than pay for itself in the first 24 hours unless you work for free.

[PeytonT]

I have what I believe is a related problem. My PDFs show videos of deaf sign language (ASL) in floating windows (since otherwise they'd take up too much space), and hopefully should permit readers to view them frame by frame to study their details. This used to be possible with MOV files before a security hole was discovered in MOV files and Adobe made this difficult. Right now I've discovered that in the latest version of Acro Pro DC, if I link them instead of embedding them, I can play the MOV files no problem, except that Adobe asks user permission each time, and my PDFs have anywhere from 20 to 100 videos in them, and it can get pretty tiresome to have to grant permission to each and every one in turn. This post mentions MOV files as a container for H264. Will that solve my problem? That is, will Acrobat see that they're H264 and play them without asking permission, yet keep the MOV interface with its frame-by-frame viewing. I'm open to any other solution that gives me frame-by-frame viewing. Thanks for your help.

Oops! Testing further, I discovered it only asks permission for the first MOV video opened, then obeys the request not to keep asking for subsequent videos. In my earlier testing I must have forgotten to check that box. But it does ask again next time you open the document. And I'd still like to know if MOV files with H264 under the covers would solve my problem, and if so, how to create them. Thanks.

To Rick Gerard: Did I understand correctly from reading one of your posts above that it's so simple as just converting a MOV to MP4 and then giving the result an MOV file extension? But if so, will Acrobat see that it's H.264 under the covers and refrain from the warning message?

Peyton Todd