Learn the essentials of exporting your composition in After Effects using either the built-in Render Queue or Adobe Media Encoder. Understand when to choose each method based on your output needs, file types, and quality settings.
Key Insights
- The Render Queue is the primary export tool within After Effects, allowing users to set quality settings to "Best Settings" and use output module presets like H.264 at 40 Mbps for most common video formats.
- Adobe Media Encoder, a separate application, provides more flexibility and additional file type options for exporting, which may be necessary for advanced or less common video requirements.
- Noble Desktop’s training emphasizes that to enable exporting, users must highlight a timeline or composition; otherwise, export functions may not activate properly.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Now, exporting. The work area is what we'll export. The instructions in 2C give you two choices.
I'm gonna do the first choice, because it's the one in this book, okay? File, export, add to Render Queue. That is Render Queue. It is the export command for the program, okay? The other choice uses another program called Media Encoder to export files.
Separate program, okay? Both instructions are here if you wanna do them. What Render Queue lets you do. Render Settings is the quality.
That should always be Best Settings, okay? Output Module is a dropdown menu of presets. The instructions say use that one. H.264 is an MPEG-4 file.
The number is the quality. 40 megabits per second is the quality, okay? By the way, notice my Render button is turned off, because until I specify where I wanna save it and what I wanna call it, output two, I click on it. I'll put it in the exports folder, by the way.
Save. Until I tell it where to save it with that little link, it won't export. And then I click Render, it makes the video file for me.
That's exported. The reason there are two choices. Render Queue gives you certain options to make a file.
Media Encoder, being another program, gives you a lot more options. It's why later there's another export with Render Queue, with Media Encoder. Certain file types I can only make in Media Encoder, okay? I have more choices of file type.
But most people need that type of file for most common uses. So I can do it here, okay? But we'll talk more about exporting in the three-day class. Okay, and that's exported, effectively.
OneNote, to get that option, you gotta have a timeline highlighted. Otherwise, you can't export, because you export timelines, you export comps. If you have something else highlighted, it doesn't always turn on, okay? The other place to get the command is Composition, Add to Render Queue.
But File, Export, Composition, the same thing. And that's exported, like that. That's all it is.
And that was the last lesson in two.