Is there a way to force Adobe Media Encoder to always render at high preview quality?

Is there a way to force Adobe Media Encoder to always render at high preview quality?

by John Holland

on Nov 10, 2016 at 7:13:07 pm

Hello! First time posting. I must say that I've lurked here a lot and you guys are pretty incredible at answering questions well. Thanks for indirectly helping me in After Effects!

So here is my problem: when I am working in After Effects, I usually have the preview quality set at Quarter or even less, to get real time previews and work out timings. I render using AME and just ctrl+alt+m to send it there. However, when rendering at basically any H.264 format, AME seems to now read the preview quality I had AE set at and render it to those specifications, resulting in something that might be at 720p but has gigantic pixels. Why is that? This is using the new 2017 release, of course, so I figure I'll just use 2015.whatever for now, but is there any reason for this, or way I can set it to always use Full?

In case it matters, I am running this off of an HP Envy, Windows 8.1 64 bit, i7-4700MQ, 16 gigs of RAM.

Re: Is there a way to force Adobe Media Encoder to always render at high preview quality?

by Roei Tzoref

on Nov 10, 2016 at 9:19:55 pm

[John Holland] "However, when rendering at basically any H.264 format, AME seems to now read the preview quality I had AE set at and render it to those specifications"

this is a bug in the current 2017 version. stay tuned this should be fixed very soon.

in the mean time these are your options:
1. before you send your comp to AME, change the resolution pop up to FULL
2. use the much better feature "Queue in AME" option that was introduced in the last version and is right there in the render queue.

here's a comparison between the "ADD to AME Queue / drag and drop" and "Queue in AME" to see why this should be your new best friend - watch from 02:54

Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

Re: Is there a way to force Adobe Media Encoder to always render at high preview quality?

by John Holland

on Nov 10, 2016 at 10:00:49 pm

Great, glad that it will be addressed soon. Changing it back to Full was the main thing I was doing, so

Interesting. So, to kind of summarize your video, Queue in AME automatically applies a bunch of features that you set beforehand? If you had already been setting a different output location, does it affect that? Is it faster to get to AME than ctrl+alt+m? Is it faster actually encoding? I very rarely use the render queue, so I'm not sure I follow what the big deal is. Quickly trying it out shows me that it replaces your default destination and doesn't grab your default preset. I would love to know more if it is better, though.

Re: Is there a way to force Adobe Media Encoder to always render at high preview quality?

by Roei Tzoref

on Nov 11, 2016 at 12:32:45 pm

[John Holland] " Queue in AME automatically applies a bunch of features that you set beforehand?"

this is actually a big deal. render settings can bite you in the a@@. rendering through Queue in AME makes sure it does not. the location is important as well. personally I don't need an AME folder for every instance of my project everytime I send a composition to AME.

here I examine all the gotchas through Add to AME Queue - from 04:12:

more about Queue in AME here:
https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/after-effects-cc-2015-3-in-depth-queu...

about the default setting - Queue in AME will default to the last setting used. if you use a preset, you can simply drag the preset you want for the preset browser or use the preset toggle to select it. I have a custom preset so I select it through it.

Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials