[RESOLVED] How do you export an animation at DVD quality?

Jaredpenland · Post by **Jaredpenland** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 9:23 pm

Hi there,

How do I/what are the settings for exporting an animation at DVD quality? When I export it, it looks slightly fuzzy. Even when I have everything set at best.

I own Anime Studio Pro and am using Sony Vegas for editing.

Thanks guys in advance

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:35 pm

Export your sequence as images ( BMPs -- 720 x480 if you are doing 4:3 ratio animation, or use the Widescreen ratios for widescreen) and bring in the sequence into Vegas. That ought to do it.

You don't want to generate an AVI or any other animated sequence because the compression codec will be applied.

Jaredpenland · Post by **Jaredpenland** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 1:29 am

Thanks!
That did the trick. Lots of picture

But it looks good.

I wonder if this is how major animation studios does it... or something similar.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 9:28 am

I think image sequences are still the preferred method of delivery, judging from several information about technical requirements. I've got TV stations and production companies asking for picture sequences, TARGA or TIFF, and someone who asked Dolby about DCP got the answer that a TIFF sequence was preferred.

Springymajig · Post by **Springymajig** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 10:26 pm

Yeah we use image sequences, and the studio I worked at last year they used image sequences, then imported them into an old video editing system called Avid or something... kinda looked a bit like Premiere with a bit of hardware attached to it that I didn't understand

BTW... you wanna be careful with widescreen stuff. There's two kinds of widescreen on a DVD, letterbox and anamorphic.

DVD as a format is always in 4:3. Therefore, you kinda have to trick the DVD player into playing widescreen ratios. Usually this is done with anamorphic widescreen pixels. The pixels that make up the image themselves are actually wide, instead of square. On a computer, if you were to look at the image sequence, the picture would look like it was squashed narrower, but the DVD player automaticaly sorts it out and stretches out the pixels to widescreen.

So what I did for the last thing I made, I had it all composited in After Effects, which can export as 16:9 anamorphic, using widescreen pixels.

guitarzan · Post by **guitarzan** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:58 pm

Hi,

I'm having the same issue with the "fuzzy" AVI file. As suggested, I tried exporting the images to BMP files and them dropped them into Adobe Premiere Elements. The result looked better, but played in super slow motion. I know this isn't an Adobe forum, but does anyone have an idea how to get this to play at the proper speed?

Also, mkelly suggested exporting images as BMP -- 720 x480. I can see how to export to the BMP images, but I don't see the option for 720 x480. Is this the default or am I missing a step? Thanks!

Blighty · Post by **Blighty** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:19 pm

Set the image dimensions by going to:
File > Project Settings...

and setting the width and height of your animation there.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:51 pm

guitarzan wrote:Hi,

I'm having the same issue with the "fuzzy" AVI file. As suggested, I tried exporting the images to BMP files and them dropped them into Adobe Premiere Elements. The result looked better, but played in super slow motion. !

When you brought them into Elements did you select only the first image and tell elements it was an image sequence?

You need to do this -- otherwise it sounds as if you simply brought in all the images as stills (which probably defaulted to a length of a second or two for each image, which would indeed make the sequence super super slow). Telling Elements that it's a sequence will automatically load it in properly by loading in the first one and then continuing as it counts up until the end of the sequence.

guitarzan · Post by **guitarzan** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:25 am

First, thank you for your help. I followed the steps and the image now looks great and is running as a sequence!

I do, however, have a different problem now. The sequence is playing faster than the audio track.

Here's a recap of what I've done: When I created the animation in ASP, I dropped in a WAV file and animated to it. When I exported to an AVI, the audio was in sync - but the image was fuzzy (As I mentioned before). To get a clearer image, I've exported as BMPs and brought them into Adobe Premiere Elements as an image sequence. Obviously, this track had no audio, so I dropped in the exact same WAV file that I used when I did the other steps. The animation and the audio start at the same time, but the animation finishes before the audio.

Any ideas?

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:55 am

What FPS are you setting in Premier? If it isn't the same as the AS file it won't sync with the audio.

Let's say the sound file is 10 seconds long. It will ALWAYS be 10 seconds. it doesn't matter what fps is used, 10 seconds of sound is 10 seconds of sound.

If AS is set to 24 fps, and the premier file is 30, the sound will play for 10 seconds... but the imported image sequence will be "faster" because there are only 24 images for each second instead of 30.

You can't really change the AS file without moving all the key frames either by hand or using the "scale animation" menu command. Changing the fps in AS doesn't make it "longer" or "shorter" it only changes the number of frames displayed per second. The number of frames stays the same.

The best thing to do is make sure the premier file matches the fps of the AS file when importing the sequence. The audio will take care of itself since it is independent of fps.

-vern

guitarzan · Post by **guitarzan** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:37 am

Thanks for the input. What you're saying makes a lot of sense, but how would I change the FPS in Premiere Elements? I don't see an option for this. It appears to be set at 30.

I tried a workaround (I used a feature called "time stretch" to play the video at 82% speed). The only problem was when I rendered, many of the lines in the animation looked jaggy. When I render at 100% speed, the image looks great, but plays too fast.

This is making me crazy.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 8:24 am

There must be a setting somewhere in Premier to change the FPS. I don't use that program so I can't say where it would be. I just can't believe they wouldn't have the ability to change the FPS. It would be crazy not to have that option in my opinion.

Try looking in anything that might be called "Project Settings" or "Document Settings" or something like that. It must be there.

Time stretching is not good. It will create frames through interpolation or duplication of frames. It won't give you good results. If Premier doesn't have the ability to change the FPS you should probably make sure you set the AS file to 30fps from now on so it matches up.

-----

by the way, the value needed to go from 30 to 24 fps is 80% not 82%.

24 / 30 = 0.8 (80%)

30 / 24 = 1.25 (125%)

-vern

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 1:29 pm

I don't use Premiere Elements (I use Premiere Pro) but if it works like PP you can change the frame rate of a clip by highlighting the clip and choosing "Interpret Footage" and then choosing what frame rate you want.

As Vern says, it's important to match up the rates for what you are doing in AS -- I have my default AS project set for 30fps because that's a "normal" NTSC render (actually with drop frame NTSC is 29.97 but the slight difference won't be noticeable unless your clip runs long -- if so and you find the audio drifting slightly you can fix by removing a frame every 100 seconds or so).

guitarzan · Post by **guitarzan** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:07 pm

Well, I finally found the way to change the FPS in Premiere Elements, but then the program kept giving me an export error every time I tried to render! AHHH! After spending too much time trying to resolve the error, I finally decided to go back to Anime Studio Pro and recreate the clips using the 30 fps setting. It took a lot of time, but I'm thrilled with the results. Thanks for all the advice on this thread. It has greatly improved the quality of my current project as well as my future projects.

Tony

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:50 pm

You probably should change the FPS on a NEW project before importing the image sequence. The export problem might have to do with changing the FPS with an image sequence at a different FPS.

I'm just guessing though.

-vern