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Animation Render - as frames - best format (tif? jpg?)

gog

Rendering animation, I was wondering if anyone wanted to weigh in with opinions.

Rendering from maya. I render the individual frames and compile the sequence later. save the images as tiff? jpeg? something else?

I'm guessing this may depend on how you compile them. I use quicktime for that. Anything better? (I know Flash can do it, premier can do it too.)

It may also depend on the necessary output as well. My goal is to put this on DVD.

 
Apr 17, 05 3:52 pm
raji

Render them out as TIFF or PNG, jpeg compresses the files (and that's bad because you are going to compress them again in the animation). I would complie them in after effects, and if you are going to put it on dvd, do not compress the video or else you will loose quality on the dvd.

Apr 17, 05 3:57 pm  · 
 · 
trace™

TIF or Targa. JPEGs us a lossy compression, meaning that it destroys data as it compresses. TIF (the lzw compression) uses a lossless compression, where no data is destroyed upon compression.
It's a person preference, although targa's have more control over how the alpha is stored. I prefer tifs.

Always keep things as hi res until the final output, then you can compress. I/we use a small, free program to compile simple sequences - I can get you the name tomorrow. Premiere is great for editing, moving sequences, fading, etc., but is a pain to get the compression right. AE is great if you want control over intro text or are doing motion graphics, but is significantly slower to use and render.

Discreet's Cleaner is the best I've used for compressing, but Sorensen's Squeeze does a stellar job for Flash and is cheap. But I doubt you'll be having Flash on a DVD, as far as I know, Flash won't use it's preloaders with CD/DVDs so it's not good (good read about this on the Flash forums). Encore or Director would be better for this, but there are simpler programs like MyDVD (Sonic) that does it for less $$ and is easier (or so I read, never used them).

Apr 17, 05 8:31 pm  · 
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David Zeibin

I use Targa from Maya and then compile in Final Cut (on a mac). Final Cut is quite slow, at least on my computer, but it doesn't get too sad if you only feed it spaced-out frames (like every second frame, or every fifth frame, etc). Slow renders, though.

I've had decent results with output compression on video with sound using Sorenson Video 3, but if you plan to burn an entire DVD, you probably don't need too much compression, ja?

Apr 18, 05 11:53 pm  · 
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ap

definitely Tiff or tga.

As the others said, if you use jpg, the movie will be doubble compressed when exporting to a movieformat in the end, which will cause really bad quality.

By the way, when choosing the compression format for the movie, chose Quicktime with Sorensen, which is far superior to all others in terms of quality and size.


ap

Apr 19, 05 7:23 am  · 
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rorei

Where I work now, at a video production company, we use targas if we are going to edit in Discreet Edit, or if we are editing in Premierwe go directly to avi DV, because Premier is going to make it go through that format anyway before it spits it out. Sorensen is great compression for the web, but as faar as I know is of no use to you if the final goal is to be put on a DVD, look at what the authoring program wants. Maybe Apples DVDStudioPro does something with Sorensen, but I don't think so. I do my compresion to mpeg2 in Premier, which is a complex subject all to itself. My boss is Macphobic, I have personally recommended to him we go where the industry is going and go Final Cut, but he and the chief editor refuse, so I don't have much opportunity to use their software.

Apr 20, 05 10:19 am  · 
 · 
rutger

Found this guide in pdf...it's called 3DtoDVD

ps. for compression, check out the: huffyuv codec

Apr 20, 05 3:51 pm  · 
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