Rendering at a higher bit depth

- This hidden gem is all about the bit depth…and rendering; how to get more quality…out of After Effects when you render…without slowing yourself down…while you're working.…After Effects defaults to a color bit depth…of 8 bits per channel, R, G, and B, and alpha as well.…For a lot of projects, that's okay.…However, you will occasionally have issues…where banding or posterization of the colors…may occur with a slower bit depth.…This project's one of them.…Let me turn off my other layers,…focus on this background layer,…and turn off its effects for now so you can see it.…

This is a very moody background…that includes just ripples of water…being reflected on a lake.…If I temporarily increase the brightness…by adjusting the exposure of this composition,…you'll see that the colors are actually…rather posterized.…Well as it turns out, these posterized colors…are not a fault with the original clip.…They're a fault of working in 8 bit per channel mode.…If I was to hold down Option on Mac, or…Alt on Windows, and click on this…