Render

[AlexGoman]

Hey guys can someone please help me!? What's the best render settings I can use (codec, .....) Like .....The best considering that I don't care about size (the bigger the better, right? =D) or how long is it going to take to render the video.......I have a 6K timelaps and now I want to render it..... Please help thanks......I'm just a beginner..... Thank you!

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

What the best format is, is rather dependent on how you are planning to use the file later.

And, no - bigger is not always better.

If you are planning to use your 6K time lapse in another project in Premiere or After Effects, you should render it out into something that will preserve as much quality as possible. You could do QuickTime with the PNG codec, but you could probably get away with QuickTime with the Photo-JPEG codec.

Now, if you just want to play it back, you would need to have your video in a deliverable format. That is, you would want something like an h.264 or h.265. And you would make that via the Adobe Media Encoder. But, honestly, first you need a 6K screen...

[Rick Gerard]

The first thing you need to do is study up on video formats and standards. You decide how you are going to distribute the video and then choose a distribution format. The most common is h.264 MP4 but there are limited to frame sizes and frame rates. 6K is too big for any traditional distribution and h.264 is only available through the Adobe Media encoder. If you are publishing to YouTube or Vimeo then you MUST read up on their standards.

If you want to preserve the maximum quality and you are working with 8bit color in 8 bit comps then the default Lossless template will work fine. Until you have stuuhed up on formats and compression you should NEVER see Custom in any of your settings for either Composition settings or Render Settings. Lossless video will not playback in real time on anything but a super computer. It's not designed for playback so don't expect it to do so. There are mezzanine formats commonly used in production workflow that are visually lossless and will playback on many systems in real time. You will have to do some research to figure out what what you want to use.

As for rendering time, it all depends on what you are doing in your compositions. I have some comps that render at the rate of 3 or 4 frames a second and others that take five to seven minutes a frame to render. It all depends on what you are doing in the project.

I would strongly suggest that you type rendering in the search help field at the top right corner of AE and do some studying. Video has standards and you must follow them if you are going to be producing videos.

[AlexGoman]

Guys thank you so much for your help! I definitely need to study the rendering formats! And I forgot to mention that I am new in this after effect world but not in the photography word =D! I do have a really performant computer, I just need help with the render. Thanks again for your time!

[Rick Gerard]

There's not many computers that will fit on a desktop or even under a desktop that will playback Lossless files in real time. You'll need a bunch of ganged processors and a really fast fiber network with a bunch of drives to do so. The format is just not designed for playback.

I would recommend nesting your 6K comp in a standard HD comp (1920 X 1080) and then fitting it horizontally using the Layer>Transform>Fit to Comp Width option from the menu (learn the keyboard shortcuts) and then either render a DI using the lossless format and then render an MP4 using the Adobe Media Encoder or just send your HD comp directly to the AME using Composition>Add to Media Encoder Cue and see what you get. If you like it, try putting your 6K comp inside a comp sized for Vimeo or YouTube's 4K standard. Unfortunately there is no standard delivery for the masses for 6K content.

I've done a bunch of Timelapse for more than 40 years using everything from Nikon f2 with a 250 exposure back, to 16 and 35 mm motion picture cameras to GoPro's strapped to the side of a building. Rule 1, manual exposure is a must, expose for the brightest part of the day (scene). Rule 2, a completely stable platform. For my GoPro footage (or anything from a DSLR, I use Lightroom to export a scaled down image sequence so that the 12MP or 28MP or even 50MP images that I originally captured are no bigger than I need them to be for the video I am producing. This could save you days and days of rendering.

Good luck. I'd love to see the work when it's published.

[A.I.1]

If you like it, try putting your 6K comp inside a comp sized for Vimeo or YouTube's 4K standard. Unfortunately there is no standard delivery for the masses for 6K content.

YouTube supports 7680x4320 - higher than 6K.

[Szalam]

A.I.1  wrote

If you like it, try putting your 6K comp inside a comp sized for Vimeo or YouTube's 4K standard. Unfortunately there is no standard delivery for the masses for 6K content.

YouTube supports 7680x4320 - higher than 6K.

Which I find rather humorous because, as Rick said, there is no standard delivery for it. The masses do not have 8K screens. Heck, the masses don't even have 4K screens yet.