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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Smallest File Size yet keeping Alpha Channel

  • Smallest File Size yet keeping Alpha Channel

    Posted by Stephen Curry on August 9, 2012 at 9:39 pm

    Hey guys,

    I’ve got some HD Digital Juice video files in .mov format with Alpha.

    Some of these 10sec files are over 1G in size.

    Is there a format I can render them out in that will keep the Alpha channel and quality but reduce the size of the file.

    Currently I’ve been reducing the dimensions from 1920×1080 to 1280×720 RGB+Alpha PNG

    Thanks
    Stephen

    Kevin Young replied 6 years, 5 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • John Cuevas

    August 10, 2012 at 12:28 am

    I like Avid DNxHD it’s not the smallest codec, but really high quality and there are a bunch of different bit rates to try if you want to change the final size. One thing, you have to go into the codec settings and choose “compressed/uncompressed” alpha along with changing the color to RGB + Alpha to create an alpha channel.

    I just did a test between a 17 second
    QT animation 1080i/29.97 = 2.9 GB, 492 MB for
    QT_Avid DNxHD 1080i/59.94 145 8-Bit.

    Avid Quicktime Codec

    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.

  • Stephen Curry

    August 10, 2012 at 11:12 am

    Thanks John….I render out using that Codec with 720p/29.97 110 8bit and it was about 20M smaller than what I was doing otherwise….

    any little helps 🙂

  • Tom Ma

    August 14, 2012 at 8:11 am

    look into proxy workflow.. it is super simple and a real time (and CPU) saver.

    or
    if overall size is your concern.. Photo JPEG is a great format that honors color pretty well.
    Unfortunately cannot combine alpha channel.
    But if you want to render separate picture and alpha channels, the black/whit alpha pass in PJPEG is very small file size. I use this often on 8-bit workflows.

  • Kevin Young

    November 14, 2019 at 5:49 am

    John, Are you creating the clips in the Juicer and then re-rendering them in the AVID codec? I don’t have these codecs available to me in the Juicer. I created a small partition off my main drive and installed Sierra and Digital Juice Juicer. It is the only thing installed on the os. Do I need to install the AVID codec for it to be available in the Juicer?

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