Very nice =) good to know!

// Christopher, Sweden

Hei that a cool post , I was everytime asking myself , good explanation thx Andrew

Great blog, Andrew! Thanks to you and your tutorials I’ve learned AE. At least a bit. Gonna order thesound fx dvd as soon as I have money (just graduated from high school, I’m unemployed and out of cash). Thx again!

Thanks Andrew, you the man again and a good inspiration.

Gday from Australia, Perth.

Hi,

If you need an alpha channel, you have to use the PNG because the Photojpeg to not integrate this channel… I don’t about Animation Codec and alpha…

Nico

Thanks THanks!!!:D

thank you! now, that really helped me out! or… as christopher said, good to know!

michael, Austria

Sweet tutorial!
Just one question: Why do you tell me not to jump off a moving train?

// Lucas, Detroit (actually i’m from Germany, but it’s sweet to be an exchange student)

Lol Andrew must feel like a saint now, he’s getting so much respect here haha! I feel a great community boiling here!

For those that want to know how to test codecs and more about them, I want to share a website that I found and have been usefull for me to determine codec quality parameters.

http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/

Thanks for the free tutorials, they are so cool! and I like the way you explain them as a friend to friend.

Miquel,
Barcelona

Thanks for these very helpfull informations

Marc
Paris, France

i jumped off a moving train this morning n almost got myself killed! i’m going to listen to your advice form now on…

What format is best if you are importing it in premiere pro 2.0??

Great info,

Its awesome how you just lay down the facts in both your workflow and tutorials. No bullship Thanks, I keep learning new things every day I check back here. Love it!

Bwe, Australia.

Excellent tip. I would also imagine the hardware you have plays into the render times as well. I’m running after effects on a machine that probably shouldn’t be running after effects so i’m gonna guess my render times are going to be slightly longer. But i will definitely give these a shot.

I check here every day, if not twice… Anyways very helpful information whats the next tutorial on?

Nice, just what i needed, i’m compositing a short animation and found out that h.264 is really great.
Glad to see it confirmed by you.
45s at 720×440 does about 17Mo, with excellent quality at the end.

Great work and amazing tutorials Andrew.

Iliès,
CGI student, Belgium

AWESOME ANDREW!!!!

Thanx 4 the great INFO.
U r my IDOL 4 Vfx. I have learnt everything from you.

I really cannot count how many times I check your Website in a Day.

Anyways, keep up the gud wrk.

WARM REGARDS
Sandy

Great info, great tutorials, great blog, great humour… GREAT! You have no idea how many people you’re helping. Good job.

Hee. andrew. ain’t it a good idea to add some sort of forum? I think most people would love it, at least I would. Then you would get even more fans and we (”the fans, viewers, film fanatics.) could learn from you and from each others experience.

gr. tesssam

Great site andrew, love it. now im wondering if i am rendering correctly. i do most of my work dv ntsc for use in final cut pro. i render quicktime DV ntsc to match my project in final cut. is this the best way or am i doing this incorrectly? or is there a better way? animation? photojpeg? png? will these give me a better result. appreciate any input.

thanks,
kooper

dude,
you are a real inspiration to me, have baught all your dvds and they ROCK ! simply some of the best tutorials and advice on VFX period.

great stuff, cant wait for the next tute, also whens Riot Gear 2 coming out – I know its in the pipeline

Manjit

great stuff, needed this.

Actually for serious work you probably don’t want to use h.264 until the very end when you publish it online or CD. Perceptually it does look nice but the color gets shifted and there are bad artifacts deep within.

As for using DV footage, I recommend doing Visual Effects and motion graphic using one of 3 options above. You simply re-import the graphic or vfx shot and place it on top of your edit in FCP or video editor. Then when you render to DVD the footage is compressed to MPEG2 from the high quality Quicktime. Otherwise, you capture in DV which is good, then add FX then render to DV which is not good. The color bleeding and artifacts will be very apparent, then when you compress again to DVD… well it’s just not worth it.

-Andrew

awesome – i was just thinking yesterday – i wish andy did a QnA so i coud ask about inter adobe rendering (such a pain:()
thanks!

Thanks a lot Andrew, very informative. Gotta love the fact that you post everyday on your blog

Keep up the good work.

Hey Jiggly, we like you being here but please do not use that homepage here. This is a friendly site and must remain PG-13. Lets keep this clean and fun.

Most of the time, when I make an animation in after effects, I render out to AVI. I am working on my demo reel right now and am editing it in premier pro, and then will author it in encore dvd.

I have never really paid much attention to compression, I just thought what I have been doing looks fine… thanks for the info!

So… if I am understanding right, it would be better for me to render my animations in after effects out in one of these formats, then import the rendered file into premier, then render THAT final project to an MPEG2 file, then burn it in Encore?

Thanks Andrew…i was wondering that because my last 15 second intro was 6 gigs…i was blown away

Thanks for posting the goods and bads with the different formats for rendering.
Also what you posted just a few posts above about DV footage is also very important as I’m working on a DVD/film with my friends using VFX. Thank you.

Good Tips. Does Divx count as a delivery codec? I find it great for web stuff, especially with their new stage6 website, just look at the quality of 1080p with divx: http://stage6.divx.com/Animation-newbies/video/1019918/Elephants-Dream—1080p-MP3-surround

Divx is a great quality delivery format with one obvious downfall. Not everyone has the codec to watch it. And if your client is not too tech saavy, they’ll proabably cooling there computer down with a martini.

As for importing back to premiere. If you are editing a large video and you have various VFX shots and many edits that do not require after effects. Bringing the quicktime renders in the video editor before compressing for DVD IS a great way. Now if you have a short video and you can bring it all into AE or the whole video is AE, then exporting to your delivery format from AE is a great way. That way you don’t even need to go to this intermediate codec you have not generation loss.

Andrew you are da man!

Hey guys,
Just to add some info if the speed and level of quality is important to you and few spair backs are not an issue:

1) In my 5 year experience the best codec is Sheer Video from BitJazz is VERY quick and LOSSLESS. Good for any resolutions and with or without alpha

2) NucleoPro from GridIron will allow you to render while you working on project or almost double speed during normal rendering. The only thing is – you need to have Dual Core CPU. AE CS3 is going to utilize Dual Core CPU’s but only for normal rendering not for prerender while working. The other good dude Aaron Rabinovich explains about that on Creative Cow.

Cheers

thanks Andrew, you are a great giant of the AE world

I export it out uncompressed and then export it out again with SUPER!, it’s a free program that does stuff that programs that you can buy won’t do. I use Xvid for export.

great… (you answered that one in an email for me)

I just want to know who the babe is…

HEY… is there a way to change the time zones for everyone on your blog… cause its set to pacific I think…

As for the time standard, I live in pacific standard, so I’m not sure how it will translate. I just updated it so that it is correct for my time, maybe it will be for you guys too. Also the “babe” is an old client of mine. I’ll be using the footage in an upcoming tutorial.

Andrew

Thanks! I am not really able to create the whole reel in AE, so it is good to know what is best for using a middle man.

So, I just got my DSFX DVD in the mail today. I’m watching the introduction tutorial and it starts out the way most of Andrew’s tutorials start, except we get a rare glimpse into a folder on his machine. The folder lists the different DVDs that have been released under Video Copilot except for one little extra one. I’m not going to reveal the secret but for those of you who have the DVD or have downloaded DSFX, take a look on Disk A> Extras> Tutorials> and watch 01. Introduction. Listen/look very carefully at around 38 seconds into the piece. Very interesting and exciting eh? I’m looking forward to it Andrew!

HEY DREW… I WAS using your light saber presets on my sample clip…
the problems is.. it takes a really long time to render… is there a faster way to render… btw…i’m using a laptop 1.5g ram to render tho. i want to render the clip with full resolution.. how can i render fast? thx

JASON, I saw it too, he’s not very discreet about it. I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as tricks up this guys sleeve. I’m waiting patiently too.

The only reason I say that about the timezone is cause my comment was central time posted but was in the middle of the blog comments… at 8:30 something…. when really it was 10:30 something…

is something to do with AE2? or Riot Gear 2?

Nice post Andrew. I love how you are available to give us some cool tips and pointers on small stuff like this. Keep it up. The blog is looking great.

As for the delivery codec, I like to use Quicktime for my web delivery options. Family or clients, I like it that way. Quicktime plays nicely, and looks great, and if the person doesnt have that on their comp, I tell them to install it. Its cost free, crap free, and everyone should have it on their comp. PC and MAC.

Thanks again. Keep it up bro.

thanks for taking the time to write all this
it’s really really useful

Thanks for posting this info Andrew. I have been using cinipak, and all my files look very poor, but I needed some compression. These settings will help me greatly, and improve the quality of my vids.

thanks again,
J- Michigan

Hi Andrew
thanks for your time and your greate information.
can you take us to the best way to make a DVD …. just play it in DVD player i mean without any kind of chapters or menus.
just how to render to DVD and of course full quality like any DVD movie.

thanx

hey andrew.great site. fantastico.
i have a question about exporting to flash video from after effects. i have an original quicktime and i wana put it up on a website with no loss of qaulity but low file size.any ideas what settigns i should use.
what do you use for your tutes

I use a lot of Avid an AE… for me the best workflow using omf avid files (a copy of the file to be safe) work it out in AE then exporting a new OMF then importing them back to Avid…

great job to everybody this blog is a good vibe wisdom blog….Andrew you have the lead voice…

Hi andrew, Great blog by the way. My wife gets upset some times because she claims I love video Copilot more than her. It’s not true I love her just as much. Only joking….

Anyway I’m planning on buying the Designer sound effects from you. Good quality sound Effects are hard to come by and the free ones downloadable from the net don’t sound too good and never fit the bill.

I was wondering have you considered making an action sound pack to go with action movie essentials because finding good guns shots and stuff is hard. most the stuff on the net sound like WW2 weapons being fired. did they have Glocks in WW2 i think not, anyway sound categories could include:

. gun fire
. rifle fire
. Machine gun
. sniper rifle
. loading sound effects
. weapon handling sound effects

.blood splat sound effect
.blood hitting a wall
.head shot sound effect.
.explostion sound effects.
.dirt and debris sound effects.

Anyway you get the idea. it’s just a thought but it would be great to have these things so we have the sounds to go with the action.

by the way really looking forward to riot gear 2.

shaun

Huge info collection —

[url=][/url]

What if i want to render in AVI format?
which options do a pick from to get the best quality?

my footage is 720:576 (16:9) when i import it into AE. The interpretation is D1/DV PAL Widescreen (1,42) which is also what i want. when i work with it I hit the toggle pixel aspect ratio correction, and it shows up as I want it to. but when i render it, suddenly the final product is in a 4:3 format.

my render settings are 720:576, quicktime animation. any clue what migjht cause this??

Dear i think H.264 Is the best HD Video render with small size

ı say first thanks.ı ask you andrew.ı cant use adobe after effect.can you help me it? bye

Hey there.

I’ve been frequenting the site lately the past few days, and it is a marvelous resource! Kudos for all the hard working people that made this site’s team, and the creator of such great tutorials!

I was wondering one thing though, the videos I see in the tutorials, how are those rendered out and what settings are used? The thing is I have a 1.7 GB video I want to render out, but I want it to be like max a 90MB video (without reducing quality so much). I see these tutorials and they look great in quality, but load really fast so I conclude that they must be low in size.

Any help please? THANK YOU!

Hi Andrew,

I know I’m not supose to write you questions to your email,… and I apologize for that. I just found this blog for those king of questions so I post them here:

1) What setings do you use with recording in Camtasia?
2) You probably take that recording to AE and do a bit of post there?
3) Do you export flash from AE? What setings do you use to export flash??

A tutorial with how to create such a good looking video tutorials, would be a great touch. Compresion, frame size wise,… not what you do in them of course!

Met

PS: You here a lot of thank yous for your free tutorials,… one more from me! You realy rock! Thanks

Andrew,

Sorry to bother you but I was really hoping you could help me out. I am editing my friends wedding video and I have always had a hard time with the final result of what I edit. I always edit something that looks great on the computer in AE but when it gets rendered out it looks totally different. For example my color correction.
Now I am trying to De-interlace something I have already edited. I looked at your tutorial on de-interlacing but I have already edited an entire video. So I was wondering if it is easier just to render out my footage in AE, bring it into Premiere and render it out again using the De-interlace setting. Is this a prectical way of doing it or is there a better way, and will I lose quality rendering it twice? Please help.

Hello Andrew……I only want to ask you why you use AE instead of Final Cut Studio

Thank you for the help and tutorials. I am having trouble uploading my file to the server for “Streaming” download on the client side.

In order to view the video streaming from the internet, (Similar to the teaser videos on this site) would this be achieved in After Effects settings or another program?

Thanks in advance

hey Andrew first of all MERRY XMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR to u and all your team!!!
just wanted to say a big THANK YOU!!! you guys helped me so much in my learning process!!! hope next year is full of GOOD suprises!!!AND NEW TUTORIALS
youre a great TEACHER,

so u recommend quicktime with a PhotoJpg quality

Thanks this quality helped

Andrew ,you are a genius making videos. I congratulate you, but to the products of “video copilot,” the Internet under the ares.
Sorry, I have no money.
Greetings

Hi Andrew! most of the time when I render an after effects video I get a choppy playback in the quicktime player and weird horizontal line cuts… (especially when I render H.264 1280px video) what is the best way to keep the best possible quality but have a smooth playback?

and what exactly causes these problems ??

xponentialdesign i got the same problem
it renders, but the playback is chopped and screwed audio 2 when rendered in quicklime format,
any help?

I am impressed and I am thankful to you. You have made my day and probably, with god’s help, you will change my life. Many thanks

Hi Andrew, I`m from Argentina, THANKS for your tutorials, I think that you, and your team are great, I am learning about after effects, and this page make me easy my works. Congratulations for what you and your team obtain. Thanks again.

sorry for my inglish, but I do what I can.

hallo andrew my name tomi from Indonesia thx a lot for all u’r tutorial im new with After Effects but im realy like this program….
i want to ask were u get the particular world???????????
coz i use the Ae CS 3 thats all one more thx a lot man

sorry if my English

Hey Andrew,
Other than the bleeding and artifacts, which are bad nonetheless, are there any other reasons why rendering to an AVI (Microsoft DV) in AE would be bad? thats what i’ve been doing since forever. while i haven’t really noticed any bleeding or artifacts, i guess because i haven’t seen a QT render of those clips, i was wondering how file-size, compression and render time compares to the 3 choices you gave us.

i’ve been rendering work files as AVIs since day one and i shudder to think how much i screwed up at my job.

thanks!

thanx a bunch. my adobe encore projects take forever what should i do i?
i use premiere export avi’s

when you guys edit movie or songs you edit all the full movie using AE?
AE has got goodgood color correction… but i can’t correct when it comes day light to evening or inside house… its really hard to adjust it… can anyone tell me the short cut type to adjust that?

Hey Andrew, what kind of capture board should I use?
Thanks

hey..i want to ask u a question…?lots of people says that software matters….is it true?..The compositing software or editing software affect the quality of your video…

Thanks a lot !! I was looking for this for a long time !
There are few guys like you (and your team) who can make great things like VideoCopilot ! Thanks for everything !

P.S. : As soon as I win to the Lottery, I buy all your products

hey andrew i was IMPRESSED by your worx since then….
thanks for this i can use this with all my projects….
i will earn some money to buy your DVDs.
and your such an inspiration to me..
i will wait for new tutorials. m looking forward

ASTIG KAU!!!!

edgar P.
(PINOY AKO!)

It’s nice to know that there is someone in the AE world who can be a good instructor, thanks for being such an unselfish person by teaching the right way to use AE.

No offense to other AE guru… but Andrew Kramer is the Best!

By the way sir Andrew, I am currently using Adobe Premiere CS3 and AE CS3, I also tried to do your render options. I’m just wondering what about the audio?

I did render my files to jpeg seq and then put it in the flash. Is this the right way to do?

Doi
Philippines

So if i make a film thats say about 10 minutes long, than it is better to use Animation?
If i make a short film that is a minute or two long than it is better to use PhotoJPG or PNG right?

Because when i exported some things in Quicktime, both Animation and PhotoJPG and they seemed to come out in the same quality.

Hi Andrew, I just wanted to add my thanks to the many comments posted already. You’re tutorials and knowledge are outstanding. I know you’re a busy man but I do have a question with regards to how you create your video tutorials. You’ve mentioned that you use Camtasia for capture but I notice that there is some postproduction as well (presumably in after effects )

Anyway, I was wondering have you any plans to do a meta-tutorial (a tutorial on how to create a tutorial). That is something that I would be willing to spend money on as it would radically improve my current productivity. If you do, let us know.

And if you don’t, not to worry. You’ve imparted an immense amount of know-how in your tutorials so far. Thanks again.

Maurice

Thanks for those tips A. Kramer.

Greetings.

Hello, Andrew Kramer. I cannot quantify the way in which you have helped After Effects users like myself to take our creativity to the next level. You have inspired me so much that I have even gone on to publish my very own website, called http://www.henrythejedi.com
In it, I have a free video tutorials for Adobe After Effects and 3D Max to help inspire the world, in much the same way that you have inspired me.
I have a quick question to ask: Please be as technically detailed as possible
-Which software do you use to record your video tutorials?
-Which codec do you use to compress your files? (e.g. Quicktime or .Flv)
-Exactly Which settings do you use for compression? (What bitrate do you use?)
-Any other information I may need

Thank you so much, Andrew and Keep up with the good works and great Products

Good read. I already use QT with JPEG because I think you mentioned it in a tutorial before. Interesting info on the other choices though.

thanks,
Rich

one question…
i have AE cs3 and i dont have render mpeg2-dvd, dont have this option… what codec is???

please help me…..

I know that you wrote these optiones here.
Ive just made the videos “Text Blur Titles” and “Fly By Titles” and “Riot Gear” from your tutorials.
And thanks, they are really great.

I have tried to export these videos in Qucktime Movie, but i loose some quality anyway.

Can you plaese tell me, what options i have to choose for these videos, too have the best quality?

- Compression Type
- Frame Rate, Key Frames
- Compressor
- Date Rate

Or what optiones did you used?

Whew, thanks! I was just about to go jump off a train!

amazing post))

Awesome writeup! thanks man

It’s hadr to understand..

So nice!

Nice posat =)

Nice! I’ll do similar post in my blog

why cant a 32 bit animation be exported as quicktime? The colors dont work as 32bit like they did in the comp! Please help!!!

Thanks.

a little addition—- its better to use a dedicated compression software to publish for web or cd or dvd . for example Sorenson or Quick time Pro. As Andrew said ” exporting .mov with photojpeg” is better same is for premiere. Exporting as uncompressed from premiere -> Then at the finale stage b4 delivering USE a dedicated compression software for best results.

Hi andrew, i am following your tutorials, however for render i am using photo-jpg, after render myclip do i want to convert to any other format for good visual.
because after i render i convert rendered clip to .mov using xilisoft converter, then i can reduce my video quality and video is also playing smoothly compare to previous way. is this correct way???

Hi Andrew, you do a great work! I just stumbled over your AE Tutorials and i am watching them for the last 5 Days now (starting to become addicted ..;-)). Thanks TOM from Austria

Hi! i have a problem with Camtasia video. I take a 3hs video and edited it, but when the render try to star this video section the render ends! BUT is no problem in rendering any section wich IS NOT in the begginning…

Hi Master andrew….. and blog frens
i have 2.6 core 2 due.4 gb ram and radon hd4650 1gb graphic card….when i open after effect it shows only 2gb of 4% ram using and am pretty unknow about opengl……. please can u suggest me about open gl best setting …….. it will be very helpful for me …..
many thnx from Nepal…..

ok i have a really really really really really really really really really RE-HEALLY stupid question .. i followed the graffiti tutorial , everything went perfect only 1 thing .. how can i save my work as a flash movie or whatever ? when i hit export > flash ..and save my work after i open it all i get is a black screen , how can i save my project ?

Hi Andrew…thnx so much for these recommendations..it’s so helpful…I’m learning a lot with all your tuts! greetz!

hi to all,guys please please can any one tell me that why my HD video (1 min) skipping in my pc??? i rendered in quicktime time with codec”png” in after effects cs4.
my video plays smothly before editing but when i edit in AE, it skips or choppy after rendered.
Here is my PC configration:
2.5 dual core with 2mb cache.
2 GB of Ram DDR2.
1 GB PCI express NVIDIA 9400 GT.
and ya i have 80 gb harddirve but my drive “c” has only 4 Gb left.

so0 can anyone give me solution.???? i hop someone will help me..

Thanks in advance,
Jack.

###QUERY
Before going down with the questions, I want to say thank you for this web, it’s literally my homepage (for the time being, currently following tutorial # 56), and it has become my bible, because dude, you have no idea how much you’ve helped me out, and got me making that dough!

###QUESTIONS
1. Given your tips on rendering, I did what you suggested, which is single file rendering, and I’m running on a macbook pro 2008 (early). Yet my rendering of a one minute video using the JPEG method took me twice as long, and the content does not contain many 3d objects or particle effects. So, is this the machine’s fault or is it a matter of OS?

2. I don’t know if you use FLASH much, but I was hoping that there will be a tutorial as to how you integrate flash with after effects (or the other way around), if it’s not any trouble, would you?

3. I live in Indonesia and I wish to buy your sound pro-score product, and is there anyway that it could be delivered all the way here? I’m having trouble with the shipping method, and my local mail is a bust, they always end up missing when they get here (it’s a silly question)

thank you mr. Kramer, you’re the man!