The basics of video formats and exporting/rendering in AE

Hi all,

I am learning After Effects CC from scratch, and am essentially in the same position as Scotty was when he made this post a few years back.

To teach myself the basics, I have some test iPhone footage that I have dumped into AE and have messed around with it to make it look like VHS video. I have a load of design industry friends on Facebook and so would like to export the file to a web friendly Facebook/YouTube format and plonk it on Facebook to get feedback.

When I come to export it, I find myself struggling with a huge hole in my knowledge:

Video formats and encoding (cue ominous music).

As a graphic designer and illustrator of several years, I have a reasonable understanding of the file formats of static images and the respective differences between them (Your Jpegs, PNGs, GIFs etc...).

I vaguely understand what rendering is (After Effects taking the bundle of content you have arranged in the AE file and consolidating it into a less editable video that can be played and rewound - similar to flattening a complex layered Photoshop file to a basic low res Jpeg).

Video formats on the other hand are double dutch to me.

One or two tutorials (this one for example) online suggest that saving a video for web follows these basic steps:

- Finish your composition
- Select 'Composition' > 'Add to Render Queue'
(Things get complex here as there seems to be a range of different settings/option for your output)
- Select 'Output Module'
- Select 'FLV' or 'H:264' under the format drop down menu.

For some reason my relatively up to date copy of After Effects CC does not seem to have 'FLV' or 'H:264' available (I have attached a screenshot of the menu I am getting).

Does anyone have

A) any ideas about these missing options?
B) any good resources that cover rendering/outputting as a crash course?

Any help would be massively appreciated as this is something I'd really like to master.

Thanks,

Jri

Jri said:

I am learning After Effects CC from scratch, and am essentially in the same position as Scotty was when he made this post a few years back.

Click to expand...

LOL! I'm not that much further on.
Actually, I was getting really into it but it's amazing what you forget after a bit of a break.

I think with CC, they dropped some of the formats such as gif.
Adobe seemed to think it was old fashioned and nobody would really use it. FFS! (Groan).

When I rendered out for Youtube I just Googled what the best formatting options were and used them.
As I recall I think I used Quicktime.
They do tend to differ a bit about what's best but as long as it works.