Highest Quality After Effects CS4 Export

[Kevin Camp]

if you use file>export, then uncompressed avi should give you the highest quality output.

however, i’d recommend using the render queue (composition>add to render queue) and set the output module to lossless (or lossless with alpha if you need alpha transparency).

other uncompressed/losslessly compressed formats are tiff, targa, png or psd sequences… advantages of these images sequences is i believe all of them are 16-bit-per-channel capable, but i’d have to check each one… but of course no audio.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Richard Stegall]

Thanks.

I greatly appreciate the info.

Also do you recommend any other codecs that I could use to get close to the same quality as “Lossless”

[Kevin Camp]

if you don’t need alpha transparency, then quicktime’s photo-jpeg is a good option. although it is a lossy codec it can maintain very good image quality at higher quality settings. it is also a standard part of quicktime, so anyone with quicktime installed can use it.

apple’s pro res is pretty good too (you’ll need a mac and the fcp suite). avid’s dnxhd codec (free from avid) is equally good. i believe both of these will need the media to conform to hd standards…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Richard Stegall]

Thanks.

Any comments on Cineform?

[Sascha Engel]

Personally,i think the Blackmagic 10bit RGB codec does the best job.you can download it for free from the BlackMagic site.

Sascha Engel

[Kevin Camp]

yep, especially if you are working in 10-bit…

sounds like he’s looking for a compressed option, though…

i’m still waiting for red giant to release digital anarchy’s microcosm codec. it’s a lossless codec that supports alpha and 16-bit color… basically the lossless animation codec but with 16-bit color support. they promised it in late 08-early 09, but still waiting…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Richard Stegall]

Thanks for all of the info guys.

[Kevin Camp]

i hadn’t use cineform, so i had to do a bit of research…

it sounds like it would be a very good codec to go with, a bit pricey, but quite possibly worth the price depending on what you are working with. it’s definitely seems a step up from pro res or dnxhd.

i’d like to see a comparison of a cineform 4:4:4 image to photo-jpeg (highest quality) image, but i could find anything. being a wavelet codec, i would expect it to fair better that photo-jpeg…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Matt Silverman]

Microcosm is the highest quality QuickTime you can kick out of AE, since it is still the only 16bit RGBA codec. And the lossless compression ratio is still one of the bestout there. However, I doubt that Red Giant will release it… kind of a bastard step-child that got inherited with the Digital Anarchy acquisition. Codecs are a dangerous business to be in (my company developed Microcosm and sold it to Digital Anarchy).

-Matt

[Kevin Camp]

yeah, microcosm is a great codec… i’ve been using the free none-16 for years now (did your company develop that too?)… i have to admit that the only thing that got me excited about digital anarchy getting bought by red giant was their mention that microcosm would be released as a freebie…

red giant’s time table for releasing free updates for effects packages that they have bought haven’t been too accurate. i think the universal binary of pinnacle’s old image lounge took nearly 12 months longer than they estimated… but they did finally get it done.

i’ll have to wait and see on microcosm… i’m hopeful 🙂

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW