Rendering in After Effects without Media Encoder

[KemiRebecca]

Hiya!

I have some videos that I've rendered in After Effects, but the file sizes are way too big to upload anywhere. They need to be able to upload to Instagram but they're currently at 4GB. I don't have media encoder anymore, so is there a way to reduce the file size when I'm rendering it within After Effects? 

Thanks in advance,

[Rick Gerard]

The Media Encoder is part of the After Effects install. Did you delete it? If you did you need to re-inatall it. The AME is by far the best way to render h.264 files and that format is the current standard for all common devices. Handbrake is free and IMHO, a fairly good but not as good compressor. Anything that is really better than the AME is going to cost. 

[Mylenium]

What stops you from just installing AME? If you need compressed formats in the Adobe CC world that's your universal hub. Not having it installed feels like shooting yourself in the foot, TBH. If for whatever reason you cannot or do not want to use AME, then feel free to use other thrird party apps like the various ffmpeg-based encoding tools like Handbrake and so on. Otherwise there's no way to get certain formats in AE. The code just isn't there and certain external CoDecs won't even show up.

Mylenium