Export as H264 with as high a bit rate over 10k as you feel comfortable for upload

[Darby Edelen]

[Roger Burton] ” My new client has asked me to export as above ie over 10k bit rate, I’ve been rendering out of AE as H264 but the only button I can find (in the AE renderer) is a tick box to limit the rate to 1,000 kb/s … should I render out using ‘animation’ and convert to H264 somewhere else … advice please ?”

Rendering out lossless is a good workflow regardless of any limitations in AE’s output options that you find. The main reason I recommend rendering lossless is because you’ll have a master file that you can encode to any format you need (provided you have a suitable encoder) without having to re-render from AE.

That said, if you’re trying to render an H.264 out of AE make sure that you do not use the QuickTime format. Set your format in the output module to H.264. This gives you more control over the encoding.

However, given the advantages of rendering a lossless master, I’d recommend going that route and then using either QuickTime Player Pro or Adobe Media Encoder to encode your H.264. I believe Adobe Media Encoder gives you more options, but does not allow you to save the H.264 stream in an MOV wrapper.

Darby Edelen

[Roger Burton]

Thanks Darby … all good points but he also said, in an earlier email, he’d like a .mov (is that not QT) … I’ll render it out ‘animation’ and take a good look at Media Encoder … good of you. Roger