Help! I lost the ability to batch export.

[montblankdesign]

I can run batch export, it runs the complete rendering cycle but no file is created. Is the problem from Quicktime updates on OS X? I am on OS 10.4.11. Regular export has always been problematic.

[slowtiger]

Does it happen the first time you render, or only after that? If so, it's likely that you have the first quicktime still open in movieplayer, so rendering a new one under the same name results in an empty file.

[montblankdesign]

I have tried quitting quick time and even a restart. My next attempt is to reinstall. Has anyone else had this happen? I was able to batch render a week ago. But there was a quicktime update. Does Anime Studio use quicktime for the rendering engine?

[montblankdesign]

I had a successful h264 export from start to finish. I suppose I can use h264. Slow tiger what do you export in for editing. I have always used the animation codec.

[heyvern]

I don't use any compression myself. I select "None" in the QT options so I can bring the files into another editor and not worry about loss of quality.

If you use any type of compression and plan to use those files in another editor you will end up doing double compression.

-vern

[slowtiger]

H-264 sometimes seems not to work while rendering directly from an animation program (any, not only AS). I guess this is because it needs information about frames in the future to encode a recent frame, which does not work if the software hasn't rendered that future frame yet. Some other codecs have the same problem. These are all those which do heavy compression, which is why I don't use them for intermediate files.

I render a master file in best resolution and quality, with codecs like Animation or None, or PNG if I wish to import that video into another program and use its transparency. Then I load this master file into iMovie or FinalCut to create small versions for the web or whatever.

[montblankdesign]

I was unaware of "none". What is the qt movie using none. A series of picts in a movie container?

[heyvern]

Yeah that is basically what it is. It is the "raw" uncompressed file for each frame but it is in "QT format".

You can actually save images in "QT format" if you wanted to, sort of like saving a jpeg where you choose quality over size on an image.

I am pretty sure but have not tested, that a QT set with "none" would have basically the same size as a series of image sequences, saved as targa or some other "uncompressed" format. Long movies with no compression can get ENORMOUS. I only use it as the very last final render stage. I never use that format for anything but "final final that's the end folks" renders.

Sometimes I will render directly to DV format if I don't plan to do anything to the movie files except string them together and burn a DVD. That way they are already in a format that iMovie uses and I can just stick them directly into the folder of a project and don't have to go through the conversion process. When I import movies into iMovie it has to "convert" them to the DV format. Even importing DV format goes through the conversion which can take some time. By rendering to DV format I just manually drag those clips into an iMovie project and they load right up.

Having uncompressed versions gives you more options.... I think... I'm not a pro. Quite honestly I don't think I know what the heck I'm talking about. The DVD's I create from AS output always look fantastic though.

-vern

[montblankdesign]

I have found Dv straight from anime sttudio to have a different look than Animation codec. But I have had that argument with a friend for some time.