-
Animation Codec – to keyframe or not to keyframe
So we’re creating some HD media content via after effects and FCP. Our process now is to work in After Effects, export a quicktime using the animation codec, which we then have to convert to an MPEG-2 with very specific settings (25 Mbps). So we’ve noticed that exporting an animation codec QT with the keyframe setting set to ‘automatic’ we’ve noticed a roughly 4 minute piece will be about 30 GB. However, we’ve found that exporting with keyframes set to every 24 frames, the file sizes are drastically different with an indistinguishable difference in the quality of the image.
My question is: why is there a difference in these when using 100% quality in a supposedly uncompressed codec?
The follow-up question is: is it worth using the keyframed codec to get the smaller file sizes? (We’re talking lots and lots of large files here) Or should we use the larger file sizes to ensure the greatest quality?
-
1 Reply
-
[Michael Black FCP] “My question is: why is there a difference in these when using 100% quality in a supposedly uncompressed codec?”
Animation is a “lossless codec” when you set certain parameters, but as you can see you can adjustthe compression. Then, I guess, become “lossy”. If you set “Keyframe every 24 frames”, that mean that one in every 24 frames is an original one, the other 23 have some compression. If you set “keyframe every frame” all the frames have the full orinal information.
Anyway if you go to DVD I would recommend you to export in a YCrCb codec: 8/10b Unc.
Cheers,
rafael
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up