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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects h264 compression

  • h264 compression

    Posted by Murat Pak on March 9, 2009 at 10:52 pm

    Hi there.

    it seems that I’m unable to “make movie” using this codec.
    What I want to ask is, how can I compress my rendered movie (quick time animation) to h264 ?

    Quick time pro is a compressor itself, but, I dont have it. So, what I’m asking is, is it possible to convert the movie to H264 using AE itself ? How is the final quality of AE (as a compressor)

    if the quality is not good OR the things I’m asking can’t be done, then what should I do ? Should I buy quick time or should I use an external standalone compressor ?

    If I should use a compressor, which one ?

    Brendan Coots replied 17 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • Brendan Coots

    March 9, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    First of all, don’t ever do “make movie.” In After Effects you should pretty much always render files using the render queue (Composition>Add To Rendere Queue). It offers way more control and way more options, including h.264. Once you add the composition to the render queue, you will need to set options in several different places, but focus on the “output module” section – this defines the type of file you want to output. If you set it to Quicktime format, you will be presented with all the codec choices available on your machine, including h.264.

    That said, After Effects really isn’t so hot at rendering out compressed files, never has been. It will work, but the files are almost always larger and of lower quality than you will get with Quicktime Pro or any other third party application. Quicktime Pro is great for outputting any Quicktime-based formats, and worth every penny. There are free compression programs available though, such as Super C, that will get the job done quite well. You just have to poke around on their site a bit to find the download link, they move it around to keep people from hotlinking directly to the file. It’s a good little app that I’ve used quite a bit so I can vouch for it.

    Brendan Coots
    Splitvision Digital
    http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

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