I want to render a transparent video but .avi files are too big

[Roei Tzoref]

If your video is intended for further editing – us QT Png RGB+Alpha. It will be much smaller. Where is this video going?

Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

[Walter Soyka]

What format you should use really depends on what you have and what you need to do with it. What is the next application that you will use this output with?

Here’s a quick list of common wrapper/codec combinations that support alpha:
Quicktime, Animation codec
Quicktime, Cineform codec
Quicktime, PNG codec
Quicktime, ProRes 4444
Quicktime or MXF, DNxHD or DNxHR codecs

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Roei Tzoref]

also Quicktime, Jpeg 2000 and I think that’s about it…

Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

[Jack Wilholt]

I want to use in it in premiere pro, so what file should I do it in? It also has music so pngs aren’t really a option I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/c/Peacemaker202MC

[Roei Tzoref]

[Jack Wilholt] “It also has music so pngs aren’t really a option I guess.”
any of the codecs specified will do. my personal favorites are QT Animation or PNG. Animation – render much faster, but produce a big size file. PNG – render much slower, but will produce a small file size.

Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

[Walter Soyka]

[Jack Wilholt] “I want to use in it in premiere pro, so what file should I do it in? It also has music so pngs aren’t really a option I guess.”

Rendering Quicktime with the PNG codec creates a MOV container for both video and audio, and it uses PNG compression for each video frame. This is separate from a PNG image sequence, which would write one individual PNG file for each frame of video and would require separate audio, as you note.

I really like the Cineform codec for intermediates between Ae and Pr. It’s a lightly-compressed format, kind of like ProRes on the Mac platform, and is a very good general-purpose codec.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Roei Tzoref] “Animation – render much faster, but produce a big size file. PNG – render much slower, but will produce a small file size.”

Animation can produce very small file sizes for content that has large areas of flat color — even smaller than PNG sometimes and a lot easier to encode/decode. PNG wins hands-down on size for photographic content, but is very slow to encode as you mention.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Roei Tzoref]

[Walter Soyka] “Animation can produce very small file sizes for content that has large areas of flat color — even smaller than PNG sometimes and a lot easier to encode/decode. PNG wins hands-down on size for photographic content, but is very slow to encode as you mention.”

Thanks Walter. can you give an example where Animation will produce smaller file size than PNG? I did a test right now for a 8sec comp containing only text and solid color.

Animation = 18 MB
PNG = 4 MB

of course PNG took 4x time to render. it’s almost like the time it takes to render, it makes up in size.

Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

[Jack Wilholt]

Thank you everyone for your help. I will try all of those options and will reply to this if I need anymore help. ?

https://www.youtube.com/c/Peacemaker202MC