schmoron13

I used network rendering for the first time (woohoo ) using 3ds max 5 and vray free, and outputed the files to .bmp's....now I'm using after effects 5.5 to create a quicktime animation that can be played on macs and pc's. The problem I'm having is that the file is huge!!! when I rendered it with DivX it came to a lil under 1mb, but with normal quality in quicktime and NO COMPRESSION, it was about 50mb. Since this is gonna be sent to a number of professors, and we all know how well they keep their comps and codecs updated , is there a codec I can use that will work on both pc and mac and most 9.2 users will have?
there are 300 frames in the shot, so it's about 10 seconds and I'd like to keep it under 1mb if possible without having HORRIBLE aliasing issues...

Thanks in advance :winkgrin:

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Doron Serban

crazy homeless guy

if you are insistent upon using quicktime, and want a file under one meg you will need to use the 'sorenson' codec version 1. this has been available in quicktime since version 4, which has been out for at least three years, so that should cover almost everyone you send it to. i think the bigger problem will be pc users who do not have quicktime installed on their computers.
ts.

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travis schmiesing

schmoron13

thanks for the quick reply, but know I have a NEWWWWW problem...it seems that everytime I use sorenson 2 (3 makes the file close to 20mb) I get a real choppy animation, as if the cropping is all screwy...

and I can't get those to 1mb...

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Doron Serban

crazy homeless guy

what resolution, fps, keyframe rate, and datarate are you writing your movie at?

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travis schmiesing

STRAT

i use sorenson 3 at a resolution no bigger than 640x480 and compression ratio of about 75%.

this gives a smooth animation and excellent quallity at a fairly low file size. much better than any AVI will give you

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schmoron13

thanks guys...

see that's the problem, I couldn't find usefull info in the manual that came with AE. It mentions the features, but doesn't really give insight as to what works best (or maybe I'm not reading it right), and I found the the online referance to be even less help. I even had to go to a coworker's office just to use his mac to see what codec's work on 9.x ...in any case, here's the settings:

640x480
PAR: square pixel @ 4:3 Frame Aspect Ratio
30Frames Per Second

Sorenson Video 3
Millions of COlors Quality set to HIGH **is that the compression ratio?**
Key frame every 30 frames checked
I'm using best quality at full resolution
I can't find the data rate info anywhere?

any suggestions?

-Doron

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Doron Serban

crazy homeless guy

i don't know if i am the best person to give advice on Sorenson settings, but i will try to help.

Sorenson needs less key frames than ordinary codec's. try setting a key frame every 150 frames.

640x480 video is a high resolution if you are potentially targeting older computers. Sorenson is a high compression complex codec, and is heavily taxing on the process during playback. older computers will choke at this resolution.

try changing from standard 30fps to 15fps. Sorenson does a good job of playing the frames smoothly.

as a side note, Sorenson struggles with the color red.

you may want to consider upgrading to the full Sorenson codec rather than just the free one. it has features like automatic key framing, which automatically inserts a key frame when the scene has a dramatic change. variable bit rate, which improves playback performance, and creates smaller file sizes. variable fps during the playback. using this feature Sorenson should drop frames automatically if it can not keep up. this will help keep the video from stuttering.

the only thing i don't like about the pro version is the number of settings. there are so many things to tweak that it could be a problem unless you know what the do.

doug werner of apple used to have a couple of nice tutorials on Sorenson compression somewhere on the web. he is the head compression guy at apple, and is responsible for several of the movie trailers posted on apple's site.

anyway, i hope that helps some.

personally right now i prefer to use windows media codec. the compression is quality similar to divx, the compression speed is extremely fast, and windows media players are already highly distributed. windows has a free encoder application, but i don't know if there is a mac version. the only foreseeable problem is not all macs have windows media player. which is just like the problem of not all windows machines have quicktime.

i can only say two bad things about this codec..

1. it is a Microsoft product.
2. it is a proprietary format.

ts.

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travis schmiesing