User Guide

353
Chapter 12: Rendering a Movie
hen you have finished assembling and animating an After Effects composition,
you can create many types of output from a single composition, including a
compressed movie ready for videotape or an image sequence of the compo-
sition frames.
When you create output, the layers of a composition and each layer’s masks, effects, and
properties are rendered frame by frame into one or more output files or, in the case of a
sequence, into a series of consecutive files.
Movies created in After Effects can be rendered in QuickTime, Video for Windows, PICT,
BMP, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash (SWF), TGA, Filmstrip, Cineon, SGI, JPEG,
PNG, TIFF, FLC/FLI, Animated GIF, and ElectricImage formats, as well as any formats
added by using a plug-in.
You can render movies to use in a wide variety of ways, including the following:
• To play on systems that have a movie player application (such as Apple QuickTime
Player)
• To record on videotape for playback on NTSC and PAL broadcast television equipment
• To record to 35mm film for editing into a cinema release
• To play from CD-ROM or as streaming video on the World Wide Web
• To play as digital video
• To import into nonlinear editing systems, such as Avid or Media 100, for final output
• To broadcast on HDTV
To render to film or video, you must have the proper hardware for film or video transfer,
or have access to a service bureau that can provide transfer services.
After Effects includes a render queue, in which you can specify items to be rendered, each
with its own rendering settings. The render queue makes it possible to render a number of
compositions unattended and in any order. You can render each composition into
multiple output formats.
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UG.book Page 353 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM