Preview

[Steve Roberts]

Back in the day …

… we used to make all kinds of sacrifices to preview our work. 160×120, quarter res, effects switched off, layers switched off and so on. In recent years, faster processors and more RAM have allowed us to preview more complete comps at higher res, so those sacrifices aren’t as necessary.

Except for one. With really heavy comps, I only preview part of the comp while I’m working. I delay a full-length preview until I expect to go to lunch or something, or when I’ve previewed all the parts and want to see the whole. Previewing the whole, with a heavy comp, is still a bit of a luxury.

And what Dave said.

[Nina Bjer]

Thank you Dave! I understand what you mean but since I’m not very good at this I still don’t understand what I should do. I use HD that I usually export to a Quicktime H.264 file (which I have been recommended for example by the film-uploading site Vimeo.com). But if I should change to a different codec, which one should that be? I have exporting problems, that you very kindly tried to help me with before, how do you mean, should I Concert to a different format just for the previewing? Sorry, I understand that this probably sound very stupid, but it’s a bit like learning a new language… 🙂

[Nina Bjer]

Thank you Steve! Yes that’s good, to preview only part of the comp, it’s just that Wien the actual film is just a few minutes it feels like it should be possible to preview the Whole thing at once, but if that doesn’t work I’ll do that.

[Nina Bjer]

You helped me with exporting before but I never quite understood all of that then. I still have some questions which I would be very happy if you would help me with! 🙂

You suggested me to “Render a high-quality file from AE, and use a different application to do the compression.“ But what settings should I have for the high quality file from AE?

I’m self taught so yes I’m probably making al kinds of mistakes you wrote about! 🙂

– For example, I don’t know how to not use Opel GL…?
– I did have the multiprocessing of
– How do I know if the HDV footage is/isn’t still in its acquisition codec?

I’m on Windows, but I’ll try Animation if it still doesn’t work with H.264.

——————————————————————–

This was my original question back then:, if it’s any help…

I have edited some films in After Effects and want to export them to Quicktime format, but am a little confused about which settings to use. I film in HD qaulity and want to keep it as good as possible. I would like to export to a format that I can use for both DVD and sites like Vimeo. When I output the films now it takes about 15 hours for three minutes of film! And also the file size is larger than 500 MB… So I would be very happy if anyone could help me a little with this! 🙂

The settings that I’m using are these:

– Compression codec: H.264 (I would like to keep this but rather change some of the below settings)

– Framerate: current

– Quality High (or should I use Best?)

– Dataspeed/datarate: Automatic, or I read that 5000Kbit/s was good for HD (this setting apparently detemines the filesize which I need to reduce)

– Size HD 1280×720, 16:9

– Letterxox and Deinterlace

– Sound: I read that I should choose AAC, but there isn’t any such option. I can choose 24 bit, alac etc, but don’t understand this so I choose uncompressed. 44.100 kHz

[Steve Roberts]

Well … from a compositing standpoint, a few minutes is rather long. We generally deal in short form (under a minute), or work with shots of a few seconds at a time.

[Jason Brown]

Dave,

Quick question…I’ve been dealing (more and more) with DVCPRO HD codecs. Are these the same intraframe codecs you are referring to? I know they are using PAR’s to lighten up the size…but I was just wondering if they were appropriate editing formats.

-Jason

[Nina Bjer]

Okej, thank’s, good, i’m learning! 🙂

[Nina Bjer]

Hi, i hope this Question was for Dave, i don’t know i’m afraid. 🙂

[Nina Bjer]

Okej, good so I’m getting to understand how to do good exporting and previewing! J Very gratefull for your help! I’m still not sure about what everything means but this is what I’ve understood so far that I should do, and the questions I’ve got left:

Final export:
1. When the film is ready export it to Quick Time’s Animation at best quality. No multipass encoding. Not using Open GL (after I‘ll find out how to do this). Not using HDV footage that’s still in its acquisition codec (after I find how to do that)

Or when Dave writes about that I need to convert the footage to a different codec, does that mean something else that to export the final film?

2. After that, I’ll try to get a different application (Adobe Media Encoder, Sorenson Squeeze and Apple’s Compressor, Quicktime Pro) to do the final compression. Maybe then I can use the H.264 format, that Vimeo recomends. In this compression I’ll do multipass encoding to improve the image quality of H.264.

Preview:
For previewing I will view short parts only.

Thanks so much for your help! 🙂

[Nina Bjer]

I found the place for selecting/unselecting the Open GL. 🙂 But I have RAM 4,00 GB ( with a processor of 2.20GHz) so maybe a can use Open GL and multiprocessing…?