file size problem

[John Cuevas]

Two 60 seconds animations can have massively different sizes, it depends on the complexity of what you are compressing.

I would make lossless QT_Animation files and take them into Media Encoder and start with a H.264 preset and customize if for your needs. When you use H.264 in the export settings, it has an “estimated file size”. You can adjust the target and maximun bit rates to try and get your file to fit your requirements.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Kevin Reiner]

Johnny is correct. Lets say you have two 60 sec animations. The first being a simple talking heads video with very little changing throughout. The second being a high-impact motion graphics speedfest. When you use a lossy compressor like .h264, you will see a huge difference in file size. This is because compression throws out or reuses repetitive material as much as possible to keep bit rates low. The talking head video is very repetitive visual, so its data size will be much smaller than something that is changing constantly.

Now if you render those out to what is considered more lossless codec, like animation or Prores 422 or 444, you will notice that the file sizes are much more similar. That is because lossless codecs make each frame independently from the ones around it, hardly using any compression at all.

It isn’t a good idea to render out .h264 from AE. That’s not its job. AE is not a very good compression app. Johnny is correct in his workflow. Not only can you see an estimated data size, but you will get better results with smaller data sizes.

Seems like an unneeded step, but always make a master in a lossless codec and then use a good compression application to make your distributables. That way if someone asks you for an .flv or .mpeg or whatever, you will be able to quickly compress that from your master file and not have to bother with AE.

Hope this helps,
Reiner

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SOFTWARE
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FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
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[Marnix Boonen]

John,

As first thank you for your respons!
After hours of searching I finally did find the problem.
The problem was; the target bitrate was on 300 Mbps.
Now I set the target bitrate from 300 Mbps to 30 Mbps.
The animations were going form 3GB to 200MB.

But really thank you for the information

[Kevin Camin]

Again, it’s not a good idea to make h264s from After Effects. You’ll typically get a much better result from a compression application like Quicktime Pro 7 or Adobe Media Converter. It’s not professional to make h264s from After Effects. You’re asking the program to render out footage then heavily compress it. After Effects is not good at walking and chewing gum at the same time. The farthest I might go is making a ProRes file from AE, it tends to do that okay in my experience (this is if you have file size storage issues), then go to h264 from a specialized app.

I would take the above advice and render out files with the animation codec and them make your h264 with another program. Just do a test and check out the difference.

Best regards,

Kevin Camin

[Kevin Reiner]

Always listen to people named Kevin.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig