Exported files are HUGE!

[Michael Szalapski]

I would recommend against using H.264 in a QuickTime wrapper. It’s unsupported and has some buggy issues sometimes.

That said, you need to adjust your bitrate in whatever format you’re using to export to affect the size of the resulting files.

The better workflow is to render an intermediate file (something like DNxHD, Cineform, or even QuickTime with the Photo-JPEG codec) out of After Effects and then use the Adobe Media Encoder to make an MP4. You get a lot more control that way.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Steve Bentley]

I’m wondering about the OP’s experience level. The render cue has been there since…. well since I can’t remember when; maybe as far back as COSA.
And the cue has nothing to do with render size. In fact its where you set render size for final output (Full size, half of comp size, custom etc). Perhaps the OP is just letting the standard settings ride without changing them and with the new install of CS6, his copy of CS5.5 went back to the default of Full size (of whatever his comp is) and full quality, when he had been rendering everything at 1/4 rez maybe?.
Compressing H264 out of AE is not the best pipeline. Sure it makes smaller files than uncompressed but you don’t get two pass compression which can drastically improve the quality and shrink the size of the final file for the web.
I think thats probably what Michael meant instead of “H264 is buggy as a QT format”. H264 in a QT wrapper kind of built the video experience on the internet since Sorenson. So, compressed correctly, H264 QT is just dandy.