Video & Animation

FLV, F4V Flash video format. A standard for online videos.

MXF OP1a Material Exchange Format. A relatively new format meant to evolve into a compatible cross-platform standard in the future.

QuickTime (MOV) After Effects default. Allows for highest quality lossless output with no compression.

Video for Windows (AVI) and Windows Media Windows only

What happened to the options for H.264 and MPEG? Theyre there up to After Effects CS6 but After Effects CC hid them and recommends that you use Adobe Media Encoder instead. Render a lossless Quicktime file in After Effects, and run it through Media Encoder to convert to the format you want or, choose Composition > Add To Adobe Media Encoder Queue instead of Add To Render Queue. Its possible to unhide these formats in After Effects CC through Preferences > Output, but youll get a warning against it.

Still Images Audio Only

Adobe Photoshop PSD Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF)

Bitmap (BMP, RLE) MP3

Cineon (CIN, DPX) WAV

Maya IFF

JPEG

OpenEXR (EXR)

PNG

Radiance (HDR, RGBE, XYZE)

SGI (SGI, BW, RGB)

Targa (TGA, VBA, ICB, VST)

TIFF

rendering video in after effects

possible formats (most of which can be ignored)

companion program:adobe media encoder This program is included with

Creative Suite if you installed the full CS6 Master Collection, or the complete CC collection, youll have it under Applications on your Mac (or in the equivalent location on your PC).

Its actually what After Effects is using in the background to render your video.

You can use it separately to convert one format to another. Just open it up, drag video or audio files in, select the destination format, and hit the play button.

But remember: if youre starting with something that is already compressed or rendered at lower resolution or size, a format conversion cant magically bring the quality or pixel information back.

Media encoder is great for making a faster small file size version from a giant lossless file, or converting formats for compatibility with different players and applications

render settings Overall settings for rendering your project that

do not depend on specific output formats. By default, these settings will be the same as

your composition settings (size, resolution, framerate, time duration, etc)

Changes made here will override existing composition settings.

Its a good idea to double check your time span here, and whether motion blur and effects are turned on or off at a global level.

output module What type of file are you generating? The above screenshot of the render queue is

set up to render two types at once (FLV and MOV). You can add more by clicking the +.

Choose your format here. The default is a lossless Quicktime MOV with a very large file size, which can result in slow loading or laggy playback.. For a video intended for a class presentation or online viewing, a more efficient compressed format like FLV or H.264 should be fine (and you can always render multiple versions for different purposes).

If you pick a format and then change the settings, thats fine. It will be labeled Custom in the render queue.

important in cs6 and lower: Make sure this is checked, or your audio will not render! Audio is on by default in CC.

tip: Hit caps lock before pressing the render button. It turns off previewing the comp in After Effects, so it will render faster.