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Exporting Animation Sequences (Best Format?)
Hey all,
I’m new to animation in After Effects, and had a question about exporting. I’ve been spending most of my time exporting uncompressed AVIs because I do not want to lose any quality (it also has the added benefit of RGB + Alpha for when I need it). My animations can be anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. My question is: are there formats in which there is little quality difference for the same purpose? I tried exporting in some other formats, but for some, the colors end up being slightly off (as with Apple ProRes formats). Any animator advice would be greatly appreciated!
Will
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2 Replies
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Hi there,
My best suggestion is to use the Apple ProRes codec. But you say the color looks off?
You can try the different format options. I often use Apple ProRes 4444, and that works for me. That video codec can contain alpha channels.
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Hi there, as John Vlach suggests above, ProRes 4444 is uncompressed format that won’t throw away any information, however the colors may still vary due to the color space you are working in.
In your After Effects Project Settings you can choose from different Bit depths and Workspaces.
For best results you will want to change these from the default depending on where your work is going.Typically for broadcast I would set the Depth to 16 bit per channel and the Workspace to Rec.709 Gamma 2.4.
If you are using assets from other apps like Illustrator and Photoshop then you should also set those projects to Rec.709.
If you are working primarily for the web however you should use sRGB option sRGB IEC61966-2.1
What your eyes see on the screen may not be accurate to the actual colors you are working with so standardising your workflow will help keep is consistent.
There’s a lot more to it but hopefully this gives you the main information that you need;)
John Williams
Soho Editors
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