For your working compositions, you need After Effects to run as fast as you can think - so you need to use the fastest editing codec. But you can't sacrifice quality for speed, or you'll be wasting your time trying to tweak effects that turn out to be due to compression artifacts - so you want to use a lossless real-time codec. And you need to be able to churn out test compositions without worrying about running out of disk space, so you want a powerful lossless real-time codec.

Internally, Adobe After Effects Standard represents all pixels as RGB[A] 8bf, and Adobe After Effects Professional represents all pixels as either RGB[A] 8bf in 8bpc projects, and as RGB[A] 16bf in 16bpc projects. As a result, After Effects works much more efficiently with RGB[A] 8bf and RGB[A] 10bf formats, so you should always use the Sheer RGB[A] 8bf and Sheer RGB[A] 10bf codecs for working compositions in After Effects.

RGB[A] Sources and Targets

If you are working with RGB[A] sources or targets, such as digitized film input or film output, then using Sheer RGB[A] will make your working compositions render much faster than using uncompressed formats, and will let you fit longer clips in RAM for preview - typically over twice as long. The Sheer Y'CbCr[A] codecs, while they may also be lossless or compress more than the Sheer RGB[A] codecs, won't run as fast in After Effects because they have to convert everything to and from the RGB[A] formats After Effects requires.

For RGB[A] 8bf material, you should use the Sheer RGB[A] 8bf codec and set your project to 8 bits/channel. For RGB[A] ≥10bf material, such as typical Cineon and DPX files, you should use the Sheer RGB[A] 10bf codec and set your project to 16 bits/channel.

Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf

Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → After Effects 16bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf

fast compact lossless workflows for working compositions

Because Sheer RGB[A] 8bf and Sheer RGB[A] 10bf losslessly encode the corresponding uncompressed RGB[A] 8bf and RGB[A] 10bf formats but are much faster and more than twice as compact, you can save space and time throughout your workflow if you convert your RGB[A] footage to Sheer RGB[A] as early as possible in your workflow, and retain it in Sheer RGB[A] format to convert back as late as possible.

RGB[A] 8bf → ... → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → ... → RGB[A] 8bf

RGB[A] 10bf → ... → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → After Effects 16bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → ... → RGB[A] 10bf

early lossless compression and late lossless decompression for efficient workflow

When working with high-precision RGB[A] sources or targets, it is worth noting that Sheer RGB[A] 8bf is around 20% faster than Sheer RGB[A] 10bf in terms of pixels per second, just as After Effects Pro runs much faster in 8-bit mode than in 10-bit mode. And Sheer RGB[A] 8bf files average more than 20% smaller than RGB[A] 10bf files. So if you don't need the extra precision for your working compositions, then, until your final compositions, even for high-precision sources and targets you may prefer to use Sheer RGB[A] 8bf for a faster, more-compact workflow, at the expense of some loss in precision:

RGB[A] 10bf → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → RGB[A] 10bf

standard-precision conversion for faster more-compact workflow for working compositions

Y'CbCr[A] Sources and Targets

If you are working with Y'CbCr[A] sources or targets, such as video cameras or television broadcast, then, for faster work in After Effects, you should convert native Y'CbCr video-format sources to Sheer RGB[A] before working with them in After Effects, and not convert them back until your final compositions.

For Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] material, unless you need to preserve out-of-range values in your Y'CbCr[A] 8b sources, you can safely delete them after converting them to Sheer RGB[A] 10b, because SheerVideo's built-in Synchromy technology converts from Y'CbCr[A] 8b color spaces to RGB[A] 10bf and back with zero loss. Note, however, that Sheer RGB[A] 10bf does not compress Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] material as well as Sheer Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] does.

Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → After Effects 16bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4]

lossless RGB[A] conversion for fast lossless workflow in working compositions

For Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:4:4[:4] sources, Sheer RGB[A] 10bf has insufficient precision for zero information loss; and for Y'CbCr[A] 4:2:2[:4] sources, there are chroma resampling losses, so in these cases you should hang onto your original Y'CbCr[A] sources for your final compositions, even though Synchromy minimizes the information loss on conversion to RGB[A] 10bf.

Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:4:4[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → After Effects 16bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:4:4[:4]

Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:2:2[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → After Effects 16bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:2:2[:4]

Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → After Effects 16bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 10bf → Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4]

high-precision RGB[A] conversion for fast minimal-loss workflow for working compositions

Sheer RGB[A] 8bf encodes and decodes pixels around 20% faster than Sheer RGB[A] 10bf, and Sheer RGB[A] 8bf files are on average more than 20% smaller than RGB[A] 10bf files. So unless you really need high precision for your working compositions, you may prefer to use Sheer RGB[A] 8bf for a faster, more-compact workflow, at the expense of some loss in precision:

Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4]

Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:4:4[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:4:4[:4]

Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:2:2[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:2:2[:4]

Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4] → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → After Effects 8bpc → Sheer RGB[A] 8bf → Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4]

standard-precision RGB[A] conversion for faster more-compact workflow for working compositions