Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 694)

688 Last updated 12/21/2009
Chapter 18: Rendering and exporting
Basics of rendering and exporting
Rendering and exporting overview
Rendering is the creation of the frames of a movie from a composition. The rendering of a frame is the creation of a
composited two-dimensional image from all of the layers, settings, and other information in a composition that make
up the model for that image. The rendering of a movie is the frame-by-frame rendering of each of the frames that make
up the movie. For more information on how each frame is rendered, see “
Render order and collapsing
transformations ” on page 64.
Though it is common to speak of rendering as if this term only applies to final output, the processes of creating
previews to show in the Footage, Layer, and Composition panels are also kinds of rendering. In fact, it is possible to
save a RAM preview as a movie and use that as your final output. (See “
Preview video and audio ” on page 195.)
After a composition is rendered for final output, it is processed by one or more output modules that encode the
rendered frames into one or more output files. This process of encoding rendered frames into files for output is one
kind of exporting.
Note: Some kinds of exporting don’t involve rendering and are for intermediate stages in a workflow, not for final output.
For example, you can export a project as an Adobe Premiere Pro project by choosing File > Export > Adobe Premiere Pro
Project. The project information is saved without rendering. In general, data transferred through Dynamic Link is not
rendered.
A movie can be made into a single output file (such as a movie in an F4V or FLV container) that contains all of the
rendered frames, or it can be made into a sequence of still images (as you would do when creating output for a film
recorder).
For a video tutorial on rendering and exporting, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0262 .
Aharon Rabinowitz provides an introduction to rendering in his “What is Rendering?” video tutorial—part of the
Multimedia 101 series on the
Creative COW website .
More Help topics
“ Render settings ” on page 697
“ Output modules and output module settings ” on page 700
The Render Queue panel
The primary way of rendering and exporting movies from After Effects is through the Render Queue panel. (See
“
Render and export with the Render Queue panel ” on page 691.)
Important: You do not need to render a movie multiple times to export it to multiple formats with the same render
settings. You can export multiple versions of the same rendered movie by adding output modules to a render item in the
Render Queue panel.