A Simple Guide On Exporting After Effects Projects To MP4 - Evercast

After Effects is feature-packed to allow you to create literally anything you can imagine in your video projects. Unfortunately, it also produces gargantuan video file sizes that are nearly impossible to share.

Thankfully, that’s where our favorite compressed video file format comes in. MP4 is a popular video format option because of its universal compatibility, especially on smartphones. If you want to share your sweet video effects to Instagram or TikTok, MP4 is your best bet.

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Pros and Cons of the MP4 format

As with anything in life, the MP4 video format has a lot of pros and cons. Choosing to use the MP4 format comes down to how you plan on using and sharing your video files.

The benefits of MP4:

• It’s one of the most universal file formats.
• It has a high amount of compression, which provides a smaller file size.
• It allows you to attach multiple kinds of files in the package, including metadata.

If you’re looking for a file format that allows you to share on any computer or mobile device with ease, and you don’t plan on reproducing it over and over, MP4 is the perfect format for you.

The drawbacks of MP4:

• It’s a “lossy” compression format, meaning file information is lost during each compression. This limits the amount of times you can re-compress the file until it is no longer recognizable.
• It is an easy format to illegally reproduce and distribute.
• It can use a lot of computing power to play MP4 files.

If you’re planning on making copy after copy of your file, or you’re producing content that you want to ensure stays secure and not vulnerable to piracy, MP4 may not be the best format for you. However, for the average video producer, these drawbacks will likely not matter much to you.

If you’re here, you’re likely a video producer that is ready to share your latest creation with every screen you can get it on, which means that you’re looking to take advantage of the universal compatibility and small file size that MP4 provides.

So, how do you take your massive After Effects projects and convert them into the much smaller MP4 format? Thankfully Adobe typically bundles their Media Encoder platform with After Effects subscriptions, making compressing After Effects projects easy.

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However, if you don’t have Media Encoder or just prefer to have an alternative, there are still ways to compress your After Effects projects.

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We’ve got your ultimate guide to exporting your After Effects projects to MP4, with or without Media Encoder.

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How to export projects in After Effects to MP4 (Using Media Encoder)

Media Encoder is Adobe’s native file compression software and pairs perfectly with all its creative tools. It allows you to export and compress files into nearly any format so you can share them easily.

Here’s how to export projects from After Effects to mp4 using Media Encoder:

Step 1: Open the After Effects project you want to export

Step 2: Select “Composition” and then choose “Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue.”

Step 3: In Media Encoder, locate “Format” and select “H264”

Media Encoder should open automatically. However, if it doesn’t, go ahead and open Media Encoder and your queued compositions should appear in the queue.

Step 4 (Optional): If you would like to apply a preset, select “Preset” and choose which preset you would like to use.