How to export your data from Adobe After Effects

After Effects doesn't have an 'export my data' button like a typical SaaS app — your project lives in a native .aep file. The two documented ways to get work out are converting a project to an Adobe Premiere Pro project (.prproj) via File > Export, or rendering compositions to video/image-sequence files through the Render Queue panel or Adobe Media Encoder.

Formats: AEP (native project), Premiere Pro Project (.prproj), Rendered video, Still-image sequencesPlan: Any After Effects license (Creative Cloud Single App or All Apps) — export/render is a core app feature, not gated by a higher tierRole: None — anyone with the project file open in a licensed copy of After Effects can export

✓ Verified against Adobe After Effects's official documentation, October 2026

Step by step

1Open the After Effects project (.aep) you want to export.
2To hand the project off as an editable timeline, make sure the composition is complete, then go to File > Export > Export Premiere Project.
3Specify a filename and location for the .prproj file and select Save — After Effects uses the settings from the first composition in the project for all resulting Premiere sequences.
4To get finished footage instead of an editable project, add the composition to the Render Queue panel (or queue it in Adobe Media Encoder) and choose an Output Module format, then render.
5To export frames instead of video, use the still-image / still-image-sequence render workflow from the Render Queue.
6For large batches, use After Effects' automated or network rendering workflow to queue multiple compositions or spread renders across machines.
7Keep the original .aep file itself if you may need to reopen the project in After Effects later — it's the only format that retains every layer, effect, expression, and keyframe.

What the export includes

✓Composition structure and layer/clip placement (when exported as a Premiere Pro project)
✓Timeline settings inherited from the first composition, applied to all resulting Premiere sequences
✓Full visual output (when rendered to video or an image sequence via Render Queue / Media Encoder)

What it doesn't include

✗Effects and masks — not supported when exporting as a Premiere Pro project
✗Shape, Text, Light, Camera, 3D, and Cinema 4D layers — not supported when exporting as a Premiere Pro project
✗Any editable keyframes/expressions once you've only exported rendered video or stills (those are baked, final-pixel output)

Before you start

⚠Exporting as a Premiere Pro project does not render pixels — it's a project/timeline conversion, not a finished video.
⚠The Premiere export reuses the first composition's settings for every subsequent sequence in the project.
⚠Projects saved from the latest version of After Effects as Premiere projects are meant to be opened in the latest version of Premiere Pro — mismatched app versions are not the documented workflow.
⚠Video formats that aren't already importable in both After Effects and Premiere (via direct import or copy-paste) are not guaranteed to work in an exported Premiere project.
⚠There is no account-level 'download all my data' export for After Effects — export is always done per project file.

Where to take your data

Free and cheaper tools that can take a Adobe After Effects export. See all Adobe After Effects alternatives →

DaVinci Resolve

Alternatives Adobe After Effects vs DaVinci Resolve

Import the .prproj exported from After Effects as a timeline, or simply import the rendered video/image sequence as media and drop it on a timeline — AE-specific effects, expressions, and unsupported layer types won't carry over either way.

Blender

Blender doesn't read .aep or .prproj files — render the composition out of the Render Queue/Media Encoder as video or an image sequence and import that into Blender's VSE or compositor.

Natron

Same approach as Blender: render finished footage or an image sequence from After Effects and bring that into Natron's node graph as a Read node; project structure itself does not transfer.

Exporting from Adobe After Effects: common questions

Can I export my After Effects project to a non-Adobe app directly?+

Not as an editable project. The only documented non-rendered export path is to Adobe Premiere Pro (.prproj) via File > Export. For any other app, you render the composition to video or an image sequence first.

Does exporting to Premiere Pro keep my effects and keyframes?+

No. Adobe's documentation states effects and masks aren't supported, and Shape, Text, Light, Camera, 3D, and Cinema 4D layers aren't supported when a project is exported as a Premiere Pro project.

What's the best way to move finished footage into another editor?+

Render the composition via the Render Queue panel or queue it in Adobe Media Encoder to a standard video or image-sequence format, then import that rendered file directly into the destination app.

Can I batch-export many compositions at once?+

Yes — After Effects supports automated and network rendering so you can queue multiple compositions and distribute rendering across machines instead of exporting one at a time.

Will a project I export now still open correctly in Premiere Pro later?+

Adobe's guidance is that projects exported as Premiere Pro projects from the latest version of After Effects are intended to be opened in the latest version of Premiere Pro, so keep both apps updated together.

Is there an 'export all my account data' option for After Effects?+

No. Unlike typical SaaS tools, After Effects has no account-wide data export — everything is scoped to individual project (.aep) files, which you export or render one at a time.

Sources

This guide was written from Adobe After Effects's own documentation and checked against it in October 2026. If a step has changed, the official page wins.