• Adobe After Effects

  H.264 for PC

  Posted by Brian Lynn on February 28, 2008 at 1:37 am

  With CS3 AE I have lost the ability to render out H.264 and keep my project size. If I choose H.264 or H.264 Blu-Ray I am forced to rezise my video before I can render. If I don’t it wont even try to render. If I choose H.264 from the QuickTime menu (how I used to do it) I get a warning about stable render, and sure enough AfterEffects crashes immediately after starting the render.

  So, I’ve learned with the changes that I’m out of luck, and I have to render out as a QuickTime uncompressed or something other than H.264 and then re-render into H.264… a very annoying double step.

  My question is: what is a good H.264 encoder for Windows machines? I’ve seen VisualHub and iSquint mentioned for Mac, but I’m on PC, and would love to have a good H.264 encoder… QuickTime is so slow its painful. After waiting for AE to render, and then have to wait on QuickTime too? Makes me want to slit my wrists since it used to be one step!

  Any suggestions?

  Thanks!
  Brian

  Butch Golden replied 18 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Pierre Jasmin

  February 28, 2008 at 11:06 pm

  You can use the Quicktime export in AE but I notice I need to apply a gamma compression of like 0.72 when exporting from AE win (or Apple Motion… or anything that links to quicktime libraries except the quicktime player pro itself I guess) to get the same levels as my source out when looking at the result with Quicktime player WIN (or to round trip H264 in AE for that matter).

  It’s about 0.91 for Quicktime player MAC when I look in the player the same file that needs a gamma 0.72 to look like the source on windows. If you need it dual platform I guess you can do something between the two gamma wise.

  Also currently seems I have to set the quicktime player (not the browser plugin) to GDI safe mode in the Quicktime preference settings when it is generated by AE, otherwise black 0 becomes 16 on my screen. Looks like DirectX wants to play as well otherwise.

  Looks like digital video is becoming like print where 30% off is something to expect.
• 

  Butch Golden

  February 29, 2008 at 11:19 pm

  Quicktime Pro does indeed have H.264 as an export option. Renders great video for $35.00

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