hi guys,
i rendered some 768x576 animations, each of them about 1000 to 1500 frames long. now i need good codecs / settings for the following needs…
1) for high quality playback (the animations are going to be presented to a quite large number of people)
2) for a cd-rom version.
ad 1)
file-size does not matter - only quality and smooth playback. since there is some text and other thin and sharp structures in all animations, divx turned out not to be the best choice (sharp edges get f…ed up also with lowest compression / highest quality settings : 8000kbps), but since i don’t know all secrets of divx-compression-settings, please let me know if you know a better way…
quicktime: i exported some animations using “Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie”, Compression: Animation, 15fps, original size.
→ superb quality, but the playback was not smooth due to the high resolution and filesize, although i used it on my Centrino Notebook, 1,4GHz, 512MB RAM. changes in the compression-quality didn’t help much.
ad 2)
file-size DOES matter - quality should be good enough, texts readable. i’d like to use a codec that all people know (also older users). divx is not that popular, most of the people would have to download it first. quicktime is very popular i think, but the file-size isn’t very usefull. what about mpeg1 or mpeg2? any chance to get good quality out of these? if there’s no other solution, i’d also burn these animations in a smaller resolution for my cd-rom part (384 x 288 or 320 x 240). any other suggestions?
i am talking about 5 animations, most of them only 1000 frames. there must be a way to get these on a cd-rom / to play them smooth although i used a quite high resolution…
Having faced similar problems with hi-res animation in the past, here’s my thoughts.
For both your options, I’d definitely recommend checking out mpeg2, as the quality is superb and the resolution is close to the size you’ve render to being 720x576 for PAL. The MPG2 format also means turn the animations into a DVD - with the right authoring software - or mini-DVD, ie. one that fits on a CD. And I’d recommend using TMPGEnc to encode it, there a shareware/freeware version out there that might suit you’re needs.
Alternatively, for option 1) you could try using quicktime with a Motion JPEG compression/codec or the MPEG-4 Video codec. Which tend to give smoother playback than quicktimes Animation codec. Although I guess this will also depend on the speed of your system. You might even find the Sorenson codec is good enough.
As for option 2) depending how much space you’ve got available on the cd-rom, it sounds like you may have to to use greater compression, eg quicktime Sorenson codec, or as you say go with the smaller resolution. Using MPG1 in theory limits you to a max size of 352X288, and areas of high contrast, e.g. white text on a black background, may turn blocky.
A third alternative is the WMV format, which can give excellent quality hi-res animation and good playback performance. You’d need software like Windows Media Encoder to create it, although i believe this is free to download from Micros**t.
just tried the Sorenson codec with my original resolution of 768 x 576, 15 fps - superb quality, fast playback, all texts untouched by any possible compression artefacts, don’t know what else to say, problem solved !!! and the whole thing is only 113MB! maybe they will all fit on one CD-ROM! (otherwise i’ll go down to 640x480)…
You can also use Director, and include the codec on the cd as an extra. Director can install the codec for the person automatically if they do not have it.
