How to Save/Render an Animated Gif in Adobe After Effects CS5

[Shopped]

I could be wrong but it seems that the option of rendering an Animated Gif was removed from the render queue format/options in After Effects CS5.

I can't find any way to export or render an animated gif out of After Effects CS5, but I am pretty sure it was in After Effects CS4.

Was it completely removed or just moved somewhere else?

[Ultiman]

To create an animated GIF movie, first render and export a QuickTime movie from After Effects. Then import the QuickTime movie into Photoshop Extended and export the movie to animated GIF using Save For Web & Devices

so in saying that yeah for some reason REMOVED all-tho i dont remember the option in cs4 i dont remember properly sorry

[Yutosi]

From what I read on Adobe's website you are correct. The ability to export an animated gif directly from AE was removed in the 64-bit version of After Effects CS5.

Adobe now wants you to render it as a Quicktime file and then open the .mov file in Photoshop... then save the animated gif from Photoshop. This might be kind of a pain because of the extra steps, but it will actually give you more options when saving the gif and better ability to optimize the output file size.

Oddly enough, Premiere Pro CS5 still has an animated gif render option, so another way to do it is to render any video format from After Effects and then import it into a Premiere Pro project and then render it as a gif from Premiere Pro.

Maybe there will be an AE CS5 plugin to do it, but I haven't found one yet.

[Yutosi]

Haha you beat me to it Ultiman

[Ultiman]

he he we must have been typing at the same time :P

[Evan Fotis]

Hi, just to note that PS appears to have a 500 frame limitation when exporting to gif.
And that through AME or Premier, the file size is big, it does not resample to indexed colors.

[ankush34a]

when you place a composition into the Render Queue panel, it becomes a render item. You can add many render items to the render queue, and After Effects can render multiple items in a batch, unattended. When you click the Render button in the upper-right corner of the Render Queue panel, all items with the status of Queued are rendered and output in the order in which they are listed in the Render Queue panel. When rendering of a render item is complete, it remains in the Render Queue panel with its status changed to Done until you remove the item from the Render Queue panel. You cannot rerender a completed item, but you can duplicate it to create a new item in the queue with the same settings or with new settings. You can also drag an output module to the Project panel to import the finished movie or a placeholder into the project for use as a footage item.