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AME Rendering from AE in CC 2014
So, I upgraded to After Effects CC 2014 yesterday. Apparently, they have now chosen to remove the option to render H.264 directly from AE. You must render through AME, which, in my experience, takes about 50% longer to complete a H.264 file. At least with CC, they gave you the option to re-enable the H.264 codecs in AE. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. I’ve looked at forums and posts regarding the speed of AME and am pretty convinced that I am not alone in finding a real speed difference in AME. Although AME works fine for batch stuff that I do overnight, the inability to choose from which program I render from will probably make me go back to using CC for many projects where I need the render done as soon as possible.
Anyone with any better options?
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7 Replies
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AME does not exploit Ae’s multiprocessing feature, so it can be dramatically slower to render and encode than Ae was. But Ae’s H.264 encoder could be problematic, too.
I’d suggest you render to an intermediate file with Ae, then encode the intermediate to H.264 with AME. You can automate this with AME’s watch folder feature [link] — I use this all the time to put automatic H.264 encodes from my Ae renders onto my team Dropbox.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Thanks for the quick reply. Unless I’m missing something tho, this would not be a time saver. I’m just looking for the fastest way to get an H.264 file rendered and out the door. I have a file that is basically templated and needs to be changed every week. I just update a few of the assets, re-render and give to the client. Unfortunately, I don’t get the updates until last minute. In CC, I could have the file done in 37 minutes….in AME it takes over an hour and a half. In my estimation, that’s not an upgrade. 🙂
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Right, I’m suggesting that you not use AME to render the Ae comp directly. Instead, render to a mezzanine codec with Ae and compress that file with AME.
In my experience, this is significantly faster than using AME to render an Ae comp directly to H.264, and not significantly slower than rendering directly to H.264 from previous versions of Ae. You can also get noticeably better results, because AME with an intermediate can quickly do 2-pass encoding, whereas Ae could only ever do single-pass.
The watch folder method makes it automatic, too, so you don’t have to worry about taking extra steps. I think this would be the fastest way with CC 2014.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
In CC 2014 if I select QuickTimeH.264 is still listed as a Codec under Format Options.
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Right, but you end up with a .mov. I need an .mp4
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Thanks, Walter. I’ll give it a try.
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you should be able to rename the .mov to .mp4 without any trouble down the line.
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