Exporting as video, .mov files are huge!

[ACR1000]

Hi everyone,

If someone would be able to help me with the following that would be brilliant:

I'm using Animate CC to create advertisements, these advertisements have to be exported as .mov files to comply with the specification we've been given.

Unlike in Flash, there doesn't seem to be a .mov option when exporting a movie, thus leaving me unable to tweak the advanced settings.

However in Animate CC there's "export video" which produces a .mov file.

The files I need to send are 720x1280px, and need to be under 50mb. Currently my .mov files are around 550-600mb for a 10 second animation!

Can someone please explain how to get these .mov files down in size for me, whilst retaining their quality?

I cannot see how I would do so.

I have used vector elements in the animation.

Any help would be most appreciated! I look forward to reading the responses.

[Colin Holgate]

In the export options you can choose to send the video through Adobe Media Encoder, or you can do that manually after you have created the MOV file. In AME you would choose high quality H.264 settings, to keep the video looking good.

One other thing to do, put this script into frame 1 of the timeline, it will improve the quality of the animation a lot:

stage.quality = "best";

[ACR1000]

Thanks for your reply Colin!

I have tried going through the Media Encoder, using those settings you recommended, however it's converted the file to an MP4 in the process. This isn't allowed as part of the specification we're working to.

Reduce the file size whilst also retaining the file format as .mov?

Side note: We've put the Animate CC file back into the old version of Flash, and have successfully exported the files as a .mov the old way which came out at 4mb! If we could find out how to get a 4mb .mov in animate from the same file that'd be fantastic.

Look forward to your reply, thanks.

[Colin Holgate]

You can open the MP4 in QuickTime Player 7, and Save As, to make a MOV. You can get it here:

Download QuickTime Player 7 for Mac OS X v10.6.3 or later

[ACR1000]

Hi Colin,

I've given your method a go, and it seems like you can only re-save an MP4 as a .mov if you have the Pro version of Quicktime, which we don't! I also doubt we can get it signed off unless it's free (which i'm sure it's not).

Any suggestions?

[Colin Holgate]

MPEG Streamclip is able to open MP4 and Save As to MOV:

Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows

[Colin Holgate]

This topic showed up again because someone used the "found this helpful" link! Made me reread my answer about converting MP4 to MOV. QuickTime Player (the modern one that comes with macOS) can also open MP4 and save an MOV.

[chrisgelles]

For some reason, new versions of Flash/Animate exports movies as Animation codec first and then allow you the option to convert the movie to a different (and very likely better) codec in Media Encoder.

Personally, I've found this two-step process to be clunky and slow things down, in particular on a MAC (who have presented their own issues in strong-arming everything to convert to mp4 or Apple Pro Res codecs).

It would be great if they reintegrated some codec options directly into Flash/Animate again so that you're not forced to clutter up your drives with the incredibly inflated Animation codec as a go-between.

[Colin Holgate]

Animation is a 100% quality lossless codec. There is no guarantee that a user will have the Apple Pro Res codecs. Going straight to H.264 would take a lot longer to export, and if you have misjudged the quality settings (either getting too big a file or too poor quality) you would have to do the lengthy export again.

There's also licensing issues, Animate doesn't come with a license to encode to H.264, but Adobe Media Encoder does.

Now, even within all those limitations they could at least make the Animation MOV have keyframes say every few seconds. As it stands all frames are keyframes, which is why the file is so big. I do have QuickTime Pro, so if I'm due to send someone the perfect quality Animation video, first thing I do is export it from QuickTime Player 7 as Animation again, only with the key frames set to every 100. That makes the file a lot smaller, without losing any quality.

[chrisgelles]

Oh, I understand Animation Codec makes sense some of the time...

And, that some clients might have specific previewing needs.
But, for me, I don't even use it for archival purposes. I simply find the files to be too bulky to be very useful.

[CVL1]

I have the same problem as ACR1000, surely there is an easier way within animate to sort out the file size of .movs?

Why would animate go forwards with HTML5 and let .mov suffer by removing the good render settings for this?

If anyone knows of a way to export a .mov file so it's of a reasonable size within animate it would be really helpful to share!

Thanks,

[chrisgelles]

The closest I've come to avoiding the intermediate steps of the ginormous mov is to spit out a jpeg sequence, along with any sound files, and then use a command-line tool like ffmpeg to re-compose it. At least this way, as much of the process can be automated as possible...

Still, I do miss the old options to choose codecs (similar to how After Effects works).

But, in both AE and Flash, rendering directly to mp4's has be buggy and problematic so, a go-between step was usually necessary anyway.

At least with the jpeg sequence option, you can verify that all the frames show what you'd expect.

And, if your material doesn't involve sound, you don't need to jump through too many hoops to string it together.

[Colin Holgate]

Does exporting to an image sequence show you any code driven animation?

[chrisgelles]

Excellent question.

I haven't run into that yet. Most of the animation for my projects is all set up in the key frames.

If code was involved, it's usually a custom jsfl thing designed to set key values.

So, I don't have anything evaluating on the fly, as it were. But, it should present the exact image that's shown on the stage when it bakes out a still.

If you have a sample FLA file, I'd love to test it out!

[CVL1]

So to answer ACR1000's original question am I right in saying there no way in Animate CC to export as a reasonably sized .mov file without having to go through external programs and recomposing?

I'm quite surprised that they've removed this, as it was present and working brilliantly in Flash Professional!

[chrisgelles]

Seems to be the case.

I think what happened was that the resources for making better video compression tools were all moved to Media Encoder.

As Colin Holgate pointed out, this might also have something to do with licensing as the codecs we all employ are actually bits of code that are likely each owned by different parties, each with their own licensing restrictions.

So, from a legal and financial standpoint, it makes sense to focus resources in one product (Media Encoder) rather than the dozens of software packages Adobe offers. And, since Adobe owns the Animation Codec (if I'm not mistaken), they'll use that as a go-between.

That said, it certainly has an impact on the end user's workflow.

I'm hopeful that there's a way that an extension in the works which could be folded into Flash/Animate which would make use of Media Encoder's libraries without having to jump through so many hoops. Yet, even in that case, I'd hesitate to render directly to the H264 codec due to the way its encoding works.

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

One note on what Flash Pro used to do: Flash Pro CC and Adobe Animate have almost exactly the same options with the video exporting (Animate has the ability to export multiple sizes in one go, but the compression settings are the same). Flash Pro CS6 did have all of the compression settings, but it was doing a real time export, and if the scene was complicated you would get duplicate frames and poor sound sync. You had to go back as far as Flash 8 to get good frame rate exporting, but it could not export code driven animations.

The video export from Flash Pro CC and later can be quality and frame rate perfect. At the moment the cost is the file size, but you don't have to keep that large file, once you have compressed the video to H.264, or whatever your target is, you can delete the large Animation MOV. You can always re-export the FLA if you need the large file again.

But, it still should be a feature request to at least make the export use key frames. That would cut down the file size a lot, without changing the quality at all.

[tomanhlan]

I had the same problem and I just found a very easy solution.

Just open the large mov file with Quicktime, then click File/Export and choose your quality.

And the result is unbelievable, the file from 1.05Gb and now only 2.5Mb, with the same quality (choosing 1080)

How amazing!