Good Video Compression Settings

JValencia

I've been having trouble rendering quality videos out of Adobe After Effects and Premiere.

What compression settings do you guys use for your videos? :0


Also, if you guys have experience with After Effects and Premiere, which do you prefer? I still can't find a significant difference between the two.


Thanks!

Ace-Angel

After Effects is essentially Photoshop for Animated images with the whole nine-yards in effects. You can do almost anything in After Effects.
Premiere, is more of the cleanup software for your finalization of the video, where previewing, putting in music and all that is much faster and easier to preview the changes while modifying them in real-time.

For example, last I recall, After Effects cannot scrub audio automatically, you have to press Shift to do that, and it's not very accurate in scrubbing the audio, unlike Premiere, which loads it in the cache and has a much better real-time audio output plugin.

Both do different jobs under the hood, so both compensate each other (even if it isn't apparent at the start).

As far as saving them out, the recommended settings are H264 for video output, and AAC for audio. The rest are preferential settings (full ratio or half, etc).

What exactly is the trouble anyway? Mind showing screenshots?

jipe

I don't recommend rendering compressed videos out of either program. I composite in After Effects, render out to something lossless like QuickTime .mov with the Animation codec, then edit in Premiere (if necessary, such as for a demo reel), then render out lossless again. Compression for internet is handled via QuickTime Pro using two-pass H264. I don't believe any Adobe program can do two-pass encoding, which really helps in terms of quality and file size, but for a free alternative to QT Pro, try x264.

On OS X you can use ProRes instead of Animation for your intermediate codec. On Windows you could try Lagarith or DNxHD (from Avid) for lossless alternatives, but you'll need to download and install them.

JValencia

Ace-Angel: Oh alright, I was wondering what was the difference of the two. Like you mentioned, it isn't very apparent from the start.

I am trying to render out some videos of the work I am doing, but I'm not getting the best quality out of either program. Here are two examples:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjscJ3Q6bkY&feature=related[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MDaXh5UDbs&feature=related[/ame]

They are not at the quality of video renders from IGN or Gamespot. I do use H264 to render out .MP4 videos, but I still get this quality. What are the exact settings you use?


jipe: How do you render out a video as lossless in AE or Premiere? So you recommend that I render out my videos from QuickTime Pro, Lagarith or DNxHD?


Thanks again!