In this guide, we will look at how you can render in After Effects projects with relative ease and export in After Effects with precision and quality.

How to render and export in After Effects

When starting out on After Effects it can be a difficult teething period, but well worth it, as the end product of your footage will be of the highest quality. In this step by step article, we will look into how you can render in After Effects and how you can export your project files with relative ease and little hassle.

The settings you add to the queue are integral to your project’s final quality so you need to ensure you have it all set up correctly and ready to render and export to the highest quality.

Let’s have a look at how to render and export your project in After Effects.

How to render in After Effects

Here’s how you can set the correct settings for your render queue in After Effects and export in After Effects at a high quality and efficient output.

What is a render queue?

The render queue is where you edit the setting for your project and then render it into one singular project file. In the render queue, you can also set multiple compositions that can be set with one simple click.

There are three sub menus in the render queue, these are:

  • Render Settings
  • Output Module
  • Output To

Render Settings

Screenshot-2020-08-24-at-19.23.32

You should have this set to Best Settings unless you are currently working on a proxy server to ensure After Effects is running to it’s best possible efficiency. After Effects is usually defaulted to ‘Best Setting‘ so you shouldn’t have to change it, but if you have to change it just right of the Render Settings menu click and a menu will pop up, there you can select Best Settings. 

Output Module

In the Output Module here you can select and choose the following:

  • Format
  • Codec
  • Colour depth
  • Audio output settings
  • Channels

No matter how you have filmed your footage, we advise using the animation codec settings and the Quicktime format as the best settings for exporting the footage. The reason being is has an excellently balanced file type, it’s a mix of a high-quality file and a reasonably low render time. 

If you’re looking to lay any graphics over your video footage you can set them to RGB + Alpha – this will ensure high quality and lower rendering time, basically it increases both quality and efficiency.

Output To

The Output To menu is where you choose the video you wish to export. It’s really as simple as that!

How to export in After Effects

Here we will take a look at the standard Render and Export workflow in Adobe After Effects:

Add to Render Queue
Render Queue

To finally export your finished clip, simply:

  • Click Composition -> Add to Render Queue or File -> Export -> Add to Render Queue
  • Make sure the Render Settings are on Best Settings.
  • Go through the Output Module ensuring your project has the correct settings.
  • Click Output To and choose the file location that you wish to export your finished file.

There it is! This is how you can render and export your Adobe After Effects projects with relative ease and impressive quality.

We hope this has helped you and feel free to reach out to us if you have anything else you want to discuss, or just to say hi!

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Jay Neill is the founder, owner, and managing editor of iFILMthings and believes everyone should have access to the film resources they need to plan their filmmaking project, which is why he’s dedicated iFILMthings to helping all filmmakers.