Exporting Advice

[huzz]

I am still in the process of making my first animation. it has been going on for a few months now, and I have been exporting as i go along - mainly as tests. I have many different shots, angles, actions etc. and I intend to edit them in an NLE (Premiere Pro for e.g.).
Now I am ready to do some final exports, but need some advice on doing them.
I am doing PAL widescreen (as am in europe), and have the settings at 25fps (as that is the frame rate of PAL).
The tests I did were never that smooth. Some of it is because of the fast camera movements, but I think most of it was because I exported at 'full frames (uncompressed)' My media player wouldn't play it totally smoothly.
I took a few of the better exports and edited them in Premiere in a short sequence, and exported that (as I intend to with the final film) - yet a lot of the richness of colour and quality was lost. This was partly because of the export settings in Premiere, but even if I exported it at full uncompressed from Premiere it still lacked a decent quality.
Does any one have any advice for me? What editing software have other people used? How did you export from AS? And subsequently how did you export from your editing program? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Genete]

My media player wouldn't play it totally smoothly.

What do you mean with this? It means that your media player is not fast enough to play a 25 fps @768x586 totally sync? It seems that it is not using the AGP characteristics of your graphic card (that I assume is not an old one). It is not a problem of AS or the video format. It is a problem of the usage of the power of your graphic card.
-G

[toonertime]

In the same vein, I am wondering what advice anyone has as to
the codecs. There are so many, it is confusing. What are the good
codecs and bad, and a good place to learn about these
mysteries?

[slice11217]

In the same vein, I am wondering what advice anyone has as to
the codecs. There are so many, it is confusing. What are the good
codecs and bad, and a good place to learn about these
mysteries?

I usually use 'animation' compression. -Not because of the name, but because I've worked with a lot of editors and that's what they've recommended. It seems to work with a lot of editing suites.

Ultimately, it depends on the final editing suite. If you're going to an AVID, they may want everything rendered out with the AVID codec. Media 100 used to be the same way. For the final word, you should check with your editor.

[J. Baker]

If you're planning on creating for DVD, view this topic.
viewtopic.php?t=6900

[huzz]

If you're planning on creating for DVD, view this topic.
viewtopic.php?t=6900

This is my final goal indeed, but I want to edit in between these very useful steps. Should I follow all the steps until the last one, converting them all, then put them together in my edit?

This is the advice I need most, as I am sure some users must edit various clips together to make their stories. I just wonder what codecs and methods they use...

[huzz]

My media player wouldn't play it totally smoothly.

It means that your media player is not fast enough to play a 25 fps @768x586 totally sync? It seems that it is not using the AGP characteristics of your graphic card (that I assume is not an old one). It is not a problem of AS or the video format. It is a problem of the usage of the power of your graphic card.
-G

I could imagine so, but it only really happens the first time I play the file. Once I have played it a few times, it gets better. I think it is the files size also, as some of the clips are over 20 seconds long and at full frames it creates a very large file for a very short clip. Although it is the same as uncompressed DV. My main problem is what to do with it once i have edited the uncompressed clips, as i have done this before, and all went well until I saw the quality of the final export form my editor. This may be more of a Premiere question or editing than directly an AS question, but if anybody has had some experience , it would be nice to find out what you did.

[myles]

Some of the lossless codecs (HuffYUV, Lagarith for AVI; Animation at full quality or PNG codec for Quicktime) are good for the intermediate editing stages, in that you don't lose quality through mutliple lossy compression stages, yet the playback software may be better at handling the smaller filesizes (you don't get held back by disk I/O).

Then the final output format appropriate to your medium and audience - MPEG2 (usually created by your burning software) for DVD, other formats for other circumstances e.g. maybe FLV for YouTube.

Some final codecs are less useful for clean cartoon animation, being designed to compress relatively noisy live action.


Regards, Myles.

[huzz]

Thanks myles.

[ENVISIONFILMSOHIO]

I was wondering if you (anyone) is using this in conjunction with Final Cut for Mac. I have a movie that I want to add an animation sequence to right smack in the middle (ala Kill Bill) and wonder if it's possible to export Anime into a File that Final Cut will somehow let me add into the timeline. Final Cut is Quicktime friendly but i don't know if this will work. Maybe there is another way to go about this and I'm open for suggestions.

[slowtiger]

Of course Final Cut will be able to open a QT rendered from AS. Just make sure that your AS project has the same dimensions as the other parts of your video.