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Best compression techniques for shape layer based animations
Hi all,
I’m looking for some best practices of compression for shape layer based animations to be uploaded to the web. I’d like to reduce the amount of banding I’m getting from gradients, and keep a nice color profile. I’ve tried x.264 and even though it works with mpeg streamclip, when I have the component installed, I suddenly can’t get ANY type of render out of AE. Because of that, I uninstalled it. I did, however, go back and use handbrake to encode a lossless animation as an x.264 and did a side by side comparison of an h.264 of the same animation. I liked the color profile of the x.264 better, but the banding was about the same (this is my big concern). Below is an image that that shows the comparison along with my compression settings. Note that after several screen shots and photoshopping, the banding has gotten worse all the way around.
https://i.imgur.com/emYK2tY.jpg
The gradient was done with an adjustment layer over a solid. The adjustment layer had a ramp on it with a fast blur. Maybe gaussian would be better?
Anyway, I’d like to know how you go about getting the best quality animation for the web (I’m specifically going to vimeo).
Thanks,
George
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3 Replies
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Just never took the time to get in there. For final drafts, I always want a full quality lossless animation first anyway. That way I can compress it to anything I need later. So what’s the difference if I’m using mpeg streamclip for my h.264? I suppose I could set up a queue and that might be a little faster, but I’m really looking for advice on settings.
Obviously I should have done a 2-pass, but do you think 6000kbps is too low? My understanding is that’s a good rate for hd streaming. Do you think I can achieve better results with x.264 than I am?
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Here are my suggestions –
1) Set your project to 16 or 32 bpc when you render such gradients and render to a high quality CODEC
2) Render a high quality movie from AE THEN use AME (or better) to render highly compressed variations. TAKE NOTE that rendering 2-pass movies from AE (when draggin an AEP into AME) results in renders that are twice as long. This is the case because, for this workflow, AE first renders a high quality version, internally, then uses this movie to compress the 2-pass version.
HTH
RoRKIntensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations
Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE/ACI -
Most high compression codecs such as H.264/x.264 are susceptible to banding. If the gradient was created using the AE Ramp Effect, set Ramp Scatter to 50. Add the Noise Effect at about 2.0%. It won’t be perfect, but it will look a lot better. For best results consider replacing the gradient with a texture, pattern, or solid color.
Export with AME using High Profile @ Level 4.1 and two-pass VBR. Under the Multiplexer tab set Multiplexer to MP4 and Stream Compatibility to Standard. Export with a bitrate of 10-20 Mbps if you plan to submit the encoded file to YouTube or Vimeo.
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