Exporting a video in After Effects

[Zipfinator]

If anyone here does any video editing, what's the best way to export my video out of After Effects? I've exported the video, but it keeps lagging in my media player. I'm not sure if it's because of my video card or the way I've exported it. It's going to be on a DvD after I've exported it, will that fix the lag once it's on a DvD and played on my TV (it's using standard 720x480 Resolution). Also what's the best file type to use when putting it onto a DvD? I'm not sure if it matters, I'm new to this stuff.

A quick response would be nice as this is for a school assignment that's due tomorrow. Thanks.

[ghost12332]

Well no matter what you will be burning this through a seperate program. I hate WMV and AVI, they look terrible as all hell. I like to use the quick codec (Can't it's name, h.2 or something?).

Anything but WMV and AVI.

[Zipfinator]

I've been exporting as .avi. It looks alright, just get's fucked up sometimes and it's terribly laggy

I'll try out a few of the other ones.

[Zipfinator]

I'm trying an mpeg-4 one now. I'm not sure if these files will run on my school computers, but oh well. I guess I need to make like 4 different types and hope one of them works.

[dissonance]

Well no matter what you will be burning this through a seperate program. I hate WMV and AVI, they look terrible as all hell. I like to use the quick codec (Can't it's name, h.2 or something?).

Anything but WMV and AVI.

You're thinking of H.264. I use x264, essentially the same thing, and it's fucking awesome. Quality-wise, a 1500kbps h.264/x264 = 3000kbps mpeg.
Oh, and for future reference, WMV and AVI are containers, not video codecs. If you have the option, Zip, I'd recommend using mkv as a container for exporting a high-quality video, then run that file through your converter and get a mpeg/ts stream.

[Zipfinator]

I don't have a converter, I'm just using After Effects to export it. Do you have a link to a converter so I could try what you suggested?

[dissonance]

Not for widows, unfortunately.
If it helps at all, I use vobcopy to rip, mencoder to encode video, oggenc and/or flac to encode audio, mkvmerge to make the final mkv, and devede to convert everything into an iso, and k3b to burn.
Sounds complicated, I know, but I have a collection of shell scripts that basically do it for me.

[dissonance]

After a bit of googling, I found this: http://winff.org/html/
I've never used it, so I can't vouch for it's quality, but give it a shot.
Edit: I know it's for Ubuntu, but check out step ten: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6438270 That might help, provided you do it backwards (that tutorial is for ts --> avi, what you want is avi/mkv/mp4 --> ts).

[Zipfinator]

That program worked, converted the shitty .avi into a usable mpeg file. There's no more lag . The quality is still a bit sketchy at parts, but I made it so the video is black and white and grainy so it looks old, so it sort of fits. Thanks!

Edit: I just saw that you explained how to do it differently. I'm just going to use this one, the quality really isn't that important since it's for school, the teacher wont even notice the difference anyway.

[dissonance]

You's welcome.
.mkv isn't playable on too many set-top boxes, anyway; I just use it for archival, mainly because it can store multiple audio, video, subtitle and miscellaneous files in one container. It's always great to watch a movie I've seen a hundred times before in French or something, with mandarin subs =D

[BillyDa59]

Might've been said already but, whatever. Anyways, .avi files are totally uncompressed, that's probably why they're laggy for you. I don't know why anyone would think they're bad quality though, unless by quality you mean their ability to play on low-end computers.