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Animation Codec not respecting fades
I posted this over in the Apple forums, but no response, so I’m hoping someone here can solve my issue. I recently made a video for my grandma’s birthday that’s 99% sill images with some basic motion applied. I also added two Boris 3D titles with an animated highlight to the beginning and end of the movie. I fade in to the opening title, crossfade to the background I use behind the sill images, then crossfade to the final title, and fade out. The opening and closing fades disappear completely when I export using Animation but are there when I export with Current Settings. Another strage behavior is when my first titles fade out, the color of them fades out, but a tan or almost watermarked image stays behind until the title clips end, then they immediately disappear, again with no fade.
I’ve tried adding slugs to the beginning and end of my movie, many combinations of Field Dominance, and even turning off the Boris 3D highlight layer, all to no avail. The video looks pretty unprofessional without the crossfades as the titles just appear and disappear. If anyone has ANY suggestions to try, I’d really appreciate them. I’d try more experimentation, but the sequence takes me about 35 minutes to export on my Core Duo MacBook Pro.
Thanks again,
-Brian -
5 Replies
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Why are you exporting with Animation? Unless you need an alpha channel, there’s no reason to. Use 8 bit or ProRes. 35 minutes to export? how long is the piece, and what format is it in?
Have a wonderful day.
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Hi Brian,
I think the same of Chris. No point to make a film in Animation. I think that is a codec that survives only because have Alpha channel, but it have very little future (*b, RGB, and big files).
However if you want to do it in Animation, Why not do it?
About the problem with the fades, try to render in RGB (Animation is RGB) and see if you get a better result.
Cheers,
rafael -
The reason why I’m exporting in Animation is twofold. For one, I heard, maybe heard wrong, that Animation is the Codec to use when applying basic motion which is what my entire video is comprised of. The second reason, was after exporting a standard NTSC file, it looked blurry but after making an Animation file, it was crystal clear. Yes the files are huge, 7.12GB for 5:15:17, but they just SO CLEAR, and that’s all I’m putting on the DVD, so if I fil the dvd with one file, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t think about the color space, but am re-rendering the whole video in RGB and I’ll se if that does anything. If it messes up the still but the transitions come out fine, then I’ll need to find another solution. TO Chris: Unfortunately I’m still just on FCP 5.1.4 so I don’t have access to ProRes, but also isn’t that just good for high def? I’m working with a standard NTSC sequence, and have absolutely no need to go HD with this video (my grandma can barely operate her computer, so I don’t think HD will ever enter her picture).
Thanks a lot so far, I’ll try these couple things and report back,
-Brian -
Hi Brian,
The Animation codec have been widely used mostly because is one of the few availabe QT codecs that support Alpha. Today there are better options but you have to pay for them.
I would recommend you to try to set your sequence in DV50 or Unc 8b and render in YCrCb because you want to end up in a DVD.
Rafael -
Depending on the DVD you’re making, I’d avoid the DV50 codec. If you are just making a “standard” DVD for playback in a DVD player, it will work just fine. If you’re making a data DVD with a Quicktime file for playback on a computer, avoid the DV50 codec since most if not all PC’s cannot play it back DV50 without a fairly costly codec plugin.
Also, if you make a Quicktime file for playback, make sure that you enable the “High Quality” box in the Quicktime player’s properties tab. It will make a huge difference in how good the picture looks. Better yet, go into the Quicktime preferences and enable the “Use high quality video setting when available” setting. Then, when you make a Quicktime movie, the high quality flag will be automatically set.
Using the animation codec with it’s very high data rate can easily choke an older PC or one that cannot sustain playback/processing of high data rates.
Also rendering in YCrCb is the same as rendering in YUV. That’s the option given in Final Cut’s preferences I believe.
Tom
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