NOTES ON USING AFTER EFFECTS TO EXPORT WEB MOVIES

Thank you to Jonathan Tyrell, ECI Media Arts faculty, for his ongoing advice on compression formats for the Web.

These notes pertain to rendering a QuickTime movie from After Effects, which you would then add to a web page and publish on the World Wide Web.

For a web movi in particular, you must change the dimensions (height & width, or vertical & horizontal dimensions), and the frame rate. After Effects will compress a web movie differently from exporting movie files for Mini-DV. The size and dimensions of each file will differ dramatically: digital video is much larger than web movies.

These are some of the key differences:

Description
DV Movie
Web Movie
Dimensions: 720 x 480 320 x 240
Pixel aspect ratio: Non-square Square
Frame rate: 29.97 15
Video compression: DV / DVC PRO - NTSC Sorenson
Audio compression: Uncompressed Q Design Music 2

Exporting a web video file from After Effects

Video settings for QuickTime web movies:

  • Compressor: Choose "Sorenson"
  • Colour depth: Millions
  • Frame size: 320 x 240
  • Frame rate: 15
  • Pixel aspect ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
  • Quality: 80%
  • Data rate: 300 k/sec
  • Choose "Maintain data rate"
  • Press OK

Audio settings for QuickTime web movies:

  • Compressor: Q Design Music 2
  • Sample rate: 48000 Hz
  • Sample type: 16-bit
  • Channels: Stereo
  • Interleave: 1 frame
  • Press OK

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