reducing the size of my file.

[vincentv72108630]

Hi!

i'm new to after effects (i'm still using the trial version) and illustrator. After 4 hours of work, i'm finally finished with my animation that takes only 6 seconds. My plan was to upload it to steam, but it can only be 8 MB. When I first rendered it, I had a file of 80MB, now I have a file of 20 MB with the DV settings and AVI DV PAL 48kHz. I've watched some tutorials and they advice me to use quicktime and then H.264. But the problem is, I do have quicktime and i can select it but when I try to select H.264, it's not in the options list.

Which settings shut I use?

[Mylenium]

H.264 these days is rendered directly via Adobe Media Encoder.

Mylenium

[vincentv72108630]

yes but which settings do I need to use to make my video under 8 MB

[Szalam]

Pick a YouTube preset and then check your data rate. It will give you an estimated file size at the bottom of the window. You can adjust the data rate to make it higher (better quality) or lower (smaller file size) as needed.

[vincentv72108630]

how do you mean? I already made a video, I don't need a premade preset.

[Rick Gerard]

Add your first render (80MB) to the Adobe Media Encoder, pick H.264 and the YouTube preset that matches your frame size. Check the estimated file size, then render. This will produce a file that is compatible with YouTube standards and give you good quality. If you send YouTube or any other streaming service a video that does not match their standards their software will figure that out and throw a sledge hammer compression on your video to make it conform. The quality will not be nearly as good as it would have been if you used one of the AME's standard presets.

You should only mess with the controls after you have taken the time, and it will take several hours if not days, to understand video standards, compression and formats. It's very easy to foul things up. Until you become an expert you should never see Custom in a composition setting, a sequence setting in Premiere Pro, or a render setting because the chances of you ending up with something that will look good and playback well are very small.

[vincentv72108630]

Thx a lot for your anwser. But I still have one problem, I downloaded Adobe Media Encoder, took the video and rendered it to H.264. It's not for youtube but for steam, and there you can only have PNG, GIF or JPG files. I tried rendering it to JPG and PNG but that gave me just a bunch of photos. Then I selected GIF-animation and that was what I was looking for. But the size was still 15.4MB, still to big. I tried changing some settings (even you adviced me not to) and then I rendered it to a GIF-animation file and it was small enough, but the quality is horrible. So do you know any settings or which premade setting I shut take to make it have good quality and that it is under 8 MB after rendering to a GIF-animation.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

If you want to create a gif file you should:

1. Limit the frame rate to 15 or less. 8 would be better
2. Limit the frame size to about 640 pixels wide. Smaller = better
3. Use Photoshop to compress your gif file - study up, it's easy, just load the movie

You cannot create a HD sized animated gif that has more than a half dozen frames that is only about 8 mb. It's mathematically impossible to create a file that size that is not incredibly compressed and looks horrible.

If this does not solve your problem then we need a lot more details. Gif is the last format that I would choose to present four hours of my work.

[vincentv72108630]

This solved everything, thanks a lot for your help!