Output

[Brendan Coots]

Most people render their animations out of After Effects using the Quicktime Animation Codec. It’s lossless so the files are full quality, and it supports an alpha channel.

Be warned, however, that the files will seem a little large if you’re used to dealing with DV files.

[Randall Murphy]

I’m sorry, I didn’t say what I’m working with. I’ve got DV clips that I’m manipulating in AE. They are captured from a Panasonic DVX100B through Premiere. 29.97 fps. 720×480.

[Scott Roberts]

You can try reading up on the various codecs here: https://codecs.onerivermedia.com/

I’ve been using Apple PNG 4:4:4 . . . it’s lossless, and smaller in size than animation. One River Media has done a bunch of testing with various codecs showing quality and file size, etc. Very useful site.

Color Grading presets for After Effects, Premiere, etc., plus free presets and more.

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[Randall Murphy]

I’m fairly new at this, and your reply only confused me more. Am I supposed to learn about codecs or is there a render setting already built into AE that I can use? I’d like to render DV clips from AE to edit in premiere then author in Encore. Are there any simple steps to do this?

Thank you in advance….

[Kevin Camp]

there are several different dv codecs (avid dv, dvcpro, dvcpro50, quicktime dv, and more…) and many other intermediate codecs that could be used to go between different applications. most people will render to an uncompressed or lossless codec of image sequence out of ae, to maintain the highest quality and let the next application do the compressing as it needs (whether its an nle or dvd authoring app, etc.). this is due to different apps using different codecs… dvds use mpeg2, nle’s may use one of many dv variants or propriatary codecs, web apps may use streaming formats like flv, ram, wmv, etc. so you will eventually want to learn about codecs.

but to help you out now, there are a couple of ways to get get dv out of ae. one way is to export from the file menu as a dv stream. there are a few dv codecs you can choose, dv, dvcpro, dvcpro50, i believe. generally i would use export, but if you have problems getting dv back into your nle without the nle concerting it to it’s native dv codec, this sometimes works.

the prefered way would be to render it by choosing make movie or add to render queue from the composition menu, i think (i don’t have ae on this machine, sorry). generally, rendering is a better way to go, you have more render and output options. from the output module settings you may be able to choose the dv codec that you’re useing in premiere in one of two places. at the top of the settings window fromthe format pulldown there is a list of available formats. or, if quicktime is selected as the format, click the options button and find the dv codec from the pulldown in that window.

when using the render method, if you need audio in the render (it would be prefered to add the audio in the nle, but this is worth mention) you’ll also need to enable the audio render in the output module towards the bottom of the settings window. make sure you choose the smae audio rate as the source.

you’ll also have a choice of render with progressive (default) or with fields… click the render settings from the queue and set to render fields and the correct dominance (lower for ntsc dv).

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Tom Sven]

Is there a reason why you need to render? I usualy just import my “.aep” files directly into premiere for editing using the CS2 production studio. That way if you need to go back and make changes to your AE file it automaticaly updates in premiere via dynamic link.
–Tom

[Kevin Camp]

i’m not familiar enough with the pp-ae workflow, but, if you can get a reference movie or file as a go-between between apps you’re usually better off. you can save time rendering, conserve disk space and avoid compressing and/or recompressing footage.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Randall Murphy]

At this point, I’ve got some very large clips that I’ve been chopping up into little pieces and exporting in AE under “AVI” no compression. Then I take those small snips back into AE to do editing in different comps (greenscreen work as well)text and some animation. I just realized I don’t need to chop them up, just size them down and then render them all together. When you playback any sequence in AE is there supposed to be audio? On the ram preview that is? If so, I don’t have audio and this is why I’ve been having to render out all these snippets.

When I render out, should I use the quicktime setting or AVI? And if I should use QT, what setting should I use? From what I’m gathering, once in Premiere, I should export at MPEG2 for Encore…Is this right?

I like the idea of only rendering at the end, how does this work? Importing AE files into Premiere?

[Kevin Camp]

check the help menu in ae or pp for recommended workflow between the two (actually for encore too). it sounds like you can either import projects from one to the other or reference files.

if you were to do quicktime, the lossless animation codec is usually the one to choose. it can also include an alpha channel for compositing in other software.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Randall Murphy]

I tried rendering for quicktime animation and it was blurry. Then I tried “video for windows” and it came out clean. I seems you could spend a lifetime trying different rendering settings. Is video for windows usable for premiere? At this point, I’m almost wanting to do it all in AE and render it all out at once.