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Animation codec
I’m trying to bring some DV clips captured via firewire into iMovie over to Motion in the most high quality state I can,
in the peachpit quickstart book “iMovie HD & iDVD 5” it says that the animation compressor :“works best on computer-generated animations with broad areas of flat color. Doesn’t work well for scenes with lots of colour changes”.
This surprised me as I generally hear that the animation codec is the best setting to use for highest quality output.
Can anyone advise what’s the best way to export these iMovie clips to Motion and what’s the best quality way to export a DV movie from Motion?
Thanks for any help!!
Rene
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11 Replies
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There is no need to use the Animation codec. Your clips will be fine. All you’re doing is moving pointers that refer to the original files.
Rendering out of Motion or other effects systems is a different situation. You should work from your desired end result backwards. That is, if your delivery is DV or worse, there is no reason to use Animation for anything unless you must preserve alpha information between passes or applications. Animation requires tremendous processing and rendering time and create freakin’ huge files. The choice of codecs for your intermediate steps is based on need, not necessarily on the often mistaken assumption that quality preservation is the only or primary goal.
The whole codec scene is very confusing at first. You can google codecs and find tons of helpful reading.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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Hey Rene,
The Animation codec is essentially lossless, but that means that it doesn’t compress the file size much, so you can end up with big files (such is the price for quality). I think the PP book may have meant that the codec is more efficient (i.e. gets smaller file sizes) on images that don’t change much. Regardless, it is, for all intents and purposes, lossless, just not quite as huge as Uncompressed or None.
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Just as a matter of interest, what is the difference between the animation and uncompressed QT codecs?
To me Specialcase’s post above implies that the animation codec may me a RLE implimentation.
Alan
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Check out the PNG codec. It generates the smallest lossless files of any of the free codecs in qt, supports 16 bits per channel and an alpha. Only bad thing is it is a really slow codec to encode to.
-deke
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where do i find a download for the animation codec?
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The animation codec is standard and should be available to you in the export options in Motion
Jem Schofield
Producer/Creative Director
Apple Certified Trainer
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Buttons Productions
we are your CREATIVE circle.toll free – 1.800.530.0559
http://www.buttonsproductions.com -
The animation codec is standard and should be available to you in the export options in Motion
Jem Schofield
Producer/Creative Director
Apple Certified Trainer
—
Buttons Productions
we are your CREATIVE circle.toll free – 1.800.530.0559
http://www.buttonsproductions.com -
i am using after effects. is it the same there?
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Yup. Same thing.
Jem Schofield
Producer/Creative Director
Apple Certified Trainer
—
Buttons Productions
we are your CREATIVE circle.toll free – 1.800.530.0559
http://www.buttonsproductions.com -
thanks!!
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