-
Rendering Nightmare
I’m in the midst of making a 3D demo reel and part of it involves showcasing some of my game development work. The problem is that I FRAPS’d some game footage (30 second clips avg’ing 140 megs per). I compressed them down to 5 meg files which still run very smoothly. Now, I import them into AE and once they render out, the footage is extremely (using that term lightly) choppy. Anyone have any idea why video footage would become choppy out of the renderer?
-
14 Replies
-
Thanks for your response. FRAPS is a video-capturing tool (like screen capturing, except mainly for video). I still have the 140 meg files (which are perfect), but I wasn’t able to import them straight into AE. It was an AVI format that my Mac did not like so I converted them into mpg’s. I’ll reconvert them into another video format and see if that doesn’t solve the problem. What formats are best to use for video footage in AE?
-
Convert your original 140MB files using the Quicktime Animation codec. The files will still be large, but since it is a lossless codec they will only be as large as they need to be to retain full quality, unlike uncompressed. Avoid formats like MPEG for this stage of your work as they are all very lossy and will make your work look like crap. If this is for your reel, you probably don’t want that.
I would agree with Dave on both suspicions – your frame rates aren’t matching or you used a funky codec that has heavy intraframe compression.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Would either of you suggest a video converter for me? I originally tried the two that FRAPS suggested. One hangs infinitely when you try to select a codec, the other one didn’t allow you to convert to mov’s. I went to cnet (download.com) and tried a few of the top rated ones there and in most cases, the footage hung the conversion app (unresponsive even after I stepped away from the computer for lunch today). I’m at a loss. I can’t directly drag the FRAPS footage into AE because my Mac doesn’t recognize that AVI codec and there is no FRAPS version for the Mac. As a last ditch effort, I downloaded Windows Media Encoder just to see if it could encode the footage (even if it wasn’t a quicktime conversion)…nothin. When I tried Windows Movie Maker, I would get a CRC error. I’m guessing that means it’s corrupted data? I’m just plain at a loss right now.
I figured this would be a really easy part of the reel. Take video footage of the game. Import it into AE for some quick editing.
-
This is why it is such a BAD idea to use non-standard codecs/apps for professional work. I trend to scold people for using any codec that doesn’t come standard with WMP or Quicktime, and one version back.
Chances are you’re going to have no choice but to compress the larger source files. Try the app SUPER C for this (it’s free, search Google) – it converts to/from a wide variety of formats.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I have all of the work I did for the game. I don’t think I’m explaining the situation very well. I have a PC game that I worked on. What I am trying to do is play the game, and take real-time video footage of myself playing the game (like watching clips from the game).
So first thing I needed was an application that allowed me to capture video clips of whatever was being displayed on my computer (in this instance, a video game). FRAPS is the most used video-capturing tool for recording video game footage on a PC. I tried it. The problem I had was simply converting the raw FRAPS footage (I have NO idea what codec it uses) into a video format that AE would read.
What I have been doing the last few days has been attempting to simply convert the raw FRAPS footage into a Quicktime format. That’s it.
For some reason, all of the PC apps I have used to convert the footage isn’t getting the job done. I contacted the FRAPS tech support and the rep thought I needed to update my graphics card drivers. He believes that my outdated drivers may be preventing me from converting FRAPS footage. I’ll give that a shot and report back.
I really appreciate the assistance all of you have given me.
Thank you,
Bret
-
Fraps justs generates an AVI file. So to get that onto a Mac you should encode it to a quicktime .mov file.(I think you know this already)
I would encode it on your PC using QT Pro using the before mentioned Animation codec. then transfer it to your Mac.
On a side note, isn’t there an avi codec available for the Macs? If not, that seems silly.
-
Well, I spent the last several days sending and receiving a barrage of emails to the FRAPS tech support to try and resolve the issue. The most frustrating part is that I don’t know where the fault lies – either in the conversion process with the FRAPS footage OR if it’s something in AE.
I did find something extremely interesting in that when I simply import the converted AVI files into AE and drop them in their own new composition, the render comes out just fine. However, if I expand the composition (from 320×240 to 640×480) and begin editing to make a scene, then render it out again, it becomes choppy. I’m really beginning to think it’s my ignorance of the inner workings of AE. The editing I’m doing is very simple…just adding a background for the footage and inserting text. Why would this be conflicting with the footage?
I’ll start over the 3rd time and reimport the footage and build the simple scene and report back.
For what it’s worth, I did purchase QT Pro, but that couldn’t even read the raw FRAPS footage to be able to convert it to a QT Animation file…$30 not so well spent, but I’m to the point of a mental breakdown as this is the final piece of the puzzle to my demo reel. The second this part is done, the reel goes out the door.
Thank you all again for being patient with me. I’m very grateful of everyone’s assistance here.
-
Regarding the FRAPS codec:
“The Fraps codec (FPS1) is put on the system when you install Fraps. If you’ve reinstalled Windows you will also need to reinstall Fraps in order to play back your movies.
Please keep in mind that if you want to give your raw footage to another person they will also need to have Fraps installed.”
Also:
https://www.fraps.com/download.php .
https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-153059.html -
Right. The computer that I installed QT Pro on is also the computer with FRAPS installed, which is why I’m boggled that QT Pro can’t read the footage.
-
Ok, I think I found out the problem..which boggles me. The footage will play just fine As Long As the opacity of that layer isn’t modified. The second I start modifying opacity, the footage starts jumping all over the place.
What I have are several layers, each with their own footage. During the timeline, each layer’s opacity lowers to reveal the next layer, and so on. So, essentially the 30 second clips of footage are fading out to show the next clip segment, until all of the clips have been shown. I don’t understand why this would also make my footage jump/skip around. The footage (in frames) appears to be playing like this:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,6,10,6,10,11,12,13,14,10,14,10,14,15,16, etc…the footage keeps skipping backward. It’s absolutely bizarre.
Edit: I normally wouldn’t do this, but I don’t know what else to do. I would *greatly* appreciate it if anyone would take 10 minutes to download and scrub through two of my AE files. One is the version that I didn’t do ANY modification to (I just dropped the footage in and let it render). The second is one I started building framework for (and began to modify the opacity of the footage).
Inside the folder are the 2 AE files, the 7 pieces of footage and a background image for the framework. I am asking if someone/anyone will just scrub through both files so you can see exactly what should be happening and what IS happening when I attempt to modify the footage. Link:
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up