Output options for After Effects

[mike233]

Im using Adobe After Effects CC 2018 on Windows and recently Adobe dropped support for the legacy codecs for Quicktime 7 on Windows.

According to this the only options are:

• Animation
• Apple ProRes (macOS only)
• Avid DNxHD/DNxHR
• DV
• GoPro CineForm
• MediaReactor Lite
• Uncompressed
  
  

I work at a post house that does Tv ads and we make around 50 spots a week. We need a suggestions for a good codec for Windows that aren't 1GB a piece, because we have to store a few months worth of video files on our server. QT H.264 was perfect in size and quality for us and we just need suggestions for what to do now.

Uncompressed/Animation are too big, DNX, CineForm are pretty big as well. DV is old and outdated, and MediaReactor Lite doesnt exist in the actually render options. Using Adobe Media Encoder isnt an option because we have tight deadlines and the link from AE to Media Encoder is super slow and not usable for our workflow because of time. Does anyone know away to make AE to AME faster?

[Dave_LaRonde]

The way I see it, you have two options:

• Get more storage
• Revert to version 15.0.1

[mike233]

At 3:00 of this tutorial video,​ ​the person explains that there is a difference between queuing in AME and adding to AME. Adding to AME Queue under the composition menu, is the traditional way of sending an After effects comp to AME. This way doesn't keep the render preferences, like time span, motion blur, and resolution. THis  way is also supoer SLOW.

However there is another way, using the "Queue in AME" button was added in the After Effects render Queue Window. This method sends the comp to AME but keeps all of the preferences and works very fast. THis allows us to keep the workflow, quick, and keep our presets from After effects and using AME we have access to more codecs.

We still have to find a decent Codec to do final conversion from to send out to various TV stations that isnt too big for our servers though, but this is a start.