After Effects renders files too big (3 Min. 80GB!)

[khos94241414]

Hey guys,

I have a really big problem since a rather long period of time already.

I'm owning a music YouTube channel and I'm creating audio visualizers for it regularly. It's nothing really special; just some kind of audio visualizer with a logo and background wiggle, nothing more.

But still my After Effects program seems to have issues with it... every single time I'm rendering a project of this kind, it renders a REALLY big file, much too big! Like 80GB for a 3 min. video!!!

I'm using QuickTime (H.264) in the rendering settings, and that worked perfectly in Windows 7 (max. 100MB for a 3-4 min. video), but since I'm using Windows 10 it doesn't seem to work properly any more. AVI is no alternative because it's even worse in terms of file size.

Now, as a workaround, I render every project a 2nd time in another program called "Easy H.264" which renders the videos just perfectly fine, same as Windows 7 did in former times.

What could be the problem now? How can I manage to get the normal file size back? I'm still on After Effects 2014, should I upgrade to 2015?

Best Regards

[Roei Tzoref]

I'm using QuickTime (H.264) in the rendering settings,

Don't. you should encode your file with an encoding software like Adobe Media Encoder.

read this:

using Adobe Media Encoder to create H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV videos from After Effects | Creative Clou...

and this:

Basics of rendering and exporting in After Effects CC

watch this:

[TOASTY5F99]

isn't there any free good encoding or rendering software i could use cause i cant pay for just rendering

[Ko.Maruyama]

You don't have to pay for Adobe Media Encoder, it comes free as part of your CC subscription or After Effects subscription.

[Rick Gerard]

Your problem is that you have not taken the time to learn about video formats or study up on rendering. You have two options. Use the Adobe Media encoder and the standard h.264 presets to render your projects or you should be creating a digital intermediate using a suitable production codec and then rendering your h.264 MP4 in the Adobe Media Encoder. Your frame sizes and frame rates should come from the presets in composition settings. You should NEVER use QuickTime (h.264) because Apple is no longer supporting that format and it never worked well. There are a bunch of articles and posts that make that point.

Spend a little time studying up on the proper way to render your projects and make sure you are using the standard frame size and frame rate (HDTV 1080 is the most common) for your composition settings. You cannot fiddle with the composition settings unless you know exactly what you are doing.

[defaultj6ofant3fpqa]

Hi Rick... You are quite condescending toward someone who asked a legitimate question and was simply looking for advice. I think you need to do more research on video formats and codec because h.264 is the standard for video and has always been supported by apple! Spend a little time studying before you try to give people advice.

[Warren Heaton]

default:

Let's play some quick catchup!

Rick is referring specifically to trying to render to QuickTime H264 via the After Effect Render Queue.

While it worked under Windows 7 in After Effects with QuickTime installed, it was problematic in that H264 uses a GOP structure that the After Effects Render Queue has never supported.  The only reason it worked is that older versions of AE supported QuickTime.  If you never had any frames render out of order, you got lucky.

Apple deprecated QuickTime back in 2013 in favor of AV Foundation Frameworks and Adobe removed all QuickTime components from After Effects. 

So... if you don't want to take the time to learn about this, just follow Rick's instructions (the "Use the Adobe Media encoder and the standard h.264 presets to render your projects" part).  But it's worth taking in his advice.  Friendly volunteers on the Adobe community forums may not be around to share what they've taken the time to learn.

-Warren

[Harry iii]

So I found this question, because I had the same problem. A short 3 min video was making my computer have a melt down and trying to save at over 100 GB! Whhaat is going wrong? This is not a rendering issue. I went back and noticed that one of the main video files was scaled up to over 260% to fit the other layers in the composition. Once I scaled that back down to 100% it finished rendering in under under 10 mins and came out much smaller size at 7.8GB. Once I converted it in quicktime it was down to 171MB. So I would check to make sure any original art work or movie files have not been scaled way up. Worth a shot.

[Obed Esquivel]

Yes!

-A concerned user.

[Tristan98BC]

Hey Gerard, 

I agree with the former. If we had perfect lives with the time to read hours of user guides before completing projects in our new creative plunges, we wouldn't be here asking questions and this forum would have no purpose. 

[abuse removed by moderator]

[Nicholas98A6]

i made an account just so i could tell you how much I loved your response. thank you.

[Warren Heaton]

Thank you for sharing.

Anyone interested in knowing about exporting MP4 from After Effects really should read the user guide.

Using Adobe Media Encoder to create H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV videos from After Effects

[Rishi5EC9]

Please let me know how you do this

[Random343F]

Yup we got the same problem! I exported a video that is just 6 seconds with 1080P/30 FPS Resolution and when i exported it from After Effects, the size got up to 20.8 GB! I'm so confused!

[Rick Gerard]

Sammuel5EFC, spend some time with the User Guide. There is a section on rendering. The only reason that you are confused is that you have not taken the time to learn anything about video formats and compression. Visually Lossless formats create huge files and are not intended to be shared or distributed to the public. Many lossless formats will not playback in real-time on an average system. 

[Random343F]

@Rick Gerard, thank you it's my first time as well to use After Effects and don't know how features work yet.

I will do read the User Guide so i can learn more about that.

[Ann Marie5CEE]

You can literally remove your entire sentence "The only reason that you are confused is that you have not taken the time to learn anything about video formats and compression." and sound like a decent human providing advice. Why add so much sass to your responses? 

[Warren Heaton]

@Ann Marie5CEE 
I can see how that can seem rude, but it's excactly why someone would not be confused about large files sizes.

[Ann Marie5CEE]

You mean why someone WOULD be confused. But this is exactly why this page exists - people don't always have the time, patience, comprehension skills, whatever; there are several reasons people would come to this community for help. Not for someone to cut them down and say "well you should be taking the time to learn." If that's how you experts are going to respond, you should just have every response be "go learn." All the added sass is unneccesary and condesceding. "Spend some time with the user guide", the first sentence, is sufficient and professional. 
And, there are more reasons than just rendering when it comes to large files. 

[Warren Heaton]

After Effects is not something to use without training or mentoring.  

If it's self-guided learning, the user guide is an excellent place to start that is too often overlooked.

When it cones to step-by-step guidance in the Adobe community, Rick's is some of the best. 

[Kamarudheen CK]

It is a quick fix if you are using an adobe media encoder for exporting video, just decrease the bitrate from the export panel, drag down the export menu below to see the bitrate option, decreasing it will reduce the file size as much as you want.

[Neeraj5FBB]

Even i had this problem. I'm not a pro in After effects, but this is how i solved it. 

So the main issue that i found here was that the scale of the composition was too big. What you have to do is, go to you composition settings and find the dimensions of your composition. Then go to google or anywhere and then find the right dimensions that you actually need (if you're doing this for youtube then it might be 1920*1080px. So just copy paste this over to you composition and try rendering again. Mine got solved this way. Hope yours will also be. 

[Warren Heaton]

Knowing your delivery frame size is a good tip, @Neeraj5FBB!

Here's two more:

• If rendering using the After Effects Render Queue for YouTube, use QuickTime as the format and Apple ProRes422 LT compression unless you're really tight on drive space then use Apple ProRes422 Proxy compression.  Each of these are a good quality first generation render from After Effects and ProRes has been suppoted by YouTube for awhile now.  If you're looking to render "broadcast quality" then use Apple ProRes422 HQ; however, that is more than what's needed for YouTube content.

• If you're using Adobe Media Encoder, use the H264 YouTube preset that best matches your Composition settings (which hopefully are a good match for YouTube).  There are several YouTube presets and each is specifically set to provide very good results for the corresponding frame size. 

With either of these approaches, it is not possible to get an 80GB file for 3 minutes of video that's at a good frame size and frame rate for YouTube.

It's probably worth mentioning that really, really  large movie files sizes are often the result of using no compression.  That's overkill for YouTube and almost anything else - especially when we have excellent compression options like Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD.

I have another tip, but it needs a screenshot from After Effects and I'll have to provide that later.