@Victoria Nece
What is the reason the H264 files are not rendered directly out of AE and people has to use ME?

This is an especially important issue for freelancers who may not have or may not be able to install AME on the computers provided to them. H.264 is still an ideal WIP codec, and it can be painful to budgets and to sanity to force users to wait on AME when it still feels like the Dynamic Link from AE to AME is at beta quality at best.

Why hasn't After Effects made some kind of statement regarding this? Offered an alternative workflow? Anything?

@David Simonton - Exporting h.264 from the media encoder results in colors that do not match what is shown in the composition. They look much more saturated. It's a color space issue and currently there is no way to manage colors in Media Encoder. I never experienced this problem with the old render que option. It's a problem when you've got clients demanding very specific color values. The work around is to de-saturate colors in the comp then guess what the results will be after rendering. No one should have to do this though, it's ridiculous.

Media Encoder supports H264 in an mp4 container. Will your clients accept that as an alternative?

And you have two ways to store and eyedropper color swatches in AE: use the Adobe Color Themes panel (Window > Extensions > Adobe Color Themes) to create palettes, and you'll see them in the Libraries panel as well.

Why should I have to open a second application just to export a file, when it used to work perfectly from AE render queue. It's ridiculous... There used to be tons of formats to choose from in the render queue. Now it's a graveyard.

It's like writing a document in Word, and to print it, you have to open an additional printing application

Also, if you need a quick preview render aescripts.com/aftercodecs/ will be even faster than the previous built-in H264 codec (use Speed=8 and Quality = 80 !)

It'd be GREAT to be able to get our videos in these formats. Thanks.

I 2nd this ... I require the ability to export H264 straight from After Effects. I used to have it and it was a far superior workflow than adding an extra step to AME. Some people use AE in industries other than film and TV and the removal of H264 export form AE is a major pain **********.

A better idea would be simply to add the export dialogue of AME to AE, as PPro has, so all (AE, Ame and PPro) are in harmony with the same export dialogue.

same here, it was a quick alternative to get a small file rendered for preview purposes.
What is the need to remove it!!

If I have a project that has Variable Frame Rate H.264 footage and interpret the footage to Smooth Video and then collect and transfer this project, I find that the Variable Frame Rate option has been reset back to Preserve Audio Sync!

I use this codec multiple times a day as an editor/animator, absolutely devastated after updating AE and finding this codec missing...

Yeah this is a big bummer. I get you want us to transition to AME when opening it out of AE its soooo slow, and I have to wait minutes for Dynamic Link to sync up if it does at all.

Please bring back all the codecs you stripped out (including HAP!) or make AME more user friendly. Thanks!

Please add this back in! AME is slow much slower and less user friendly. I like to use AME for final delivery but for previews a quick h264 out of AE was so easy. I could be convinced to switch to always using AME if it wasn't so slow to use the UI, even though I have a very fast up to date computer.

this, a million times this! Removing codecs people use for work and client projects is ridiculous. Then you contact support and they say use the media encoder. Thanks for making life harder and adding more steps. Also the media encoder sucks terribly.

This is a step backwards, so ******! Been using adobe products since 1998 and subscribed as long as I haven't been a student.

Hello you can use AfterCodecs for that ! aescripts.com/aftercodecs/
H.264 quality / filesize is even better

I cannot believe they removed this. Everyone I know (viz design people) use H264. It's as if the people who build the products are completely unaware of their users.

Please re-add the h.264 codec in export settings. Thousands of editors and camera ops rely on this every day and it's daft to say that it's obsolete.

For instance - rendering out of AE takes HALF the time that it does in Media Encoder (sometimes longer if 3D and motion blur is involved). Even stranger - the codec still exists in Premiere! So the inconsistency is laughable.

Please fix this. It was an inept decision to remove it in the first place.

Nothing is wrong with them. Export to Media Encoder and choose H.264 and done.