Can anyone help with a Codec problem?

[Richie Tovell]

Hey Dave.

Well, it seems that the Codecs I’ve been installing are Qicktime codecs, (I wanted AVI) So I can only select them under the Render options when rendering my projects as Qicktime movies. not ideal.

So Why is there the need to pre render to a high quality?, do you mean I should Re import my render back in to AFX and the re export with alpha to Quicktime (Effectlivly bouncing it)?

EDD: I havn’t even got to the stage whereby I even have a rendered AVI with alpha to test in the VJ app, it’s picky app, but it plays avi’s really well.

Still can’t find a codec for avi with alpha though.

[David Bogie]

I do not know of any video codecs that support alpha that can play in real time without proprietary hardware support.

bogiesan

[Richie Tovell]

Hey, I’ve cracked it!!

When I render out as QT movie with the “animation” codec it works, the movies play perfectly in Resolume (The VJ app)and the alpha channels transfer over to the render just fine. Resolume has no problem with them.

This is great, I’ve been stressing over this problem for a night and a day now, phew that was tough.

The movie file sizes are massive though, around 6x the size of an AVI render, but they play well in the app so I’m not complaining.

Thanks for helping me out once again Dave 🙂

Regards Richie.

[Richie Tovell]

What would happen If I pre-compressed the footage before it goes in to the composition? Then re render with the added alpha channel.

Could that get the file size down?

[Richie Tovell]

lol, well it was worth a try.

It’s the apps that are limited not my starage, AFX can only access 4 gig, to small for serious compositions.

Same with Resolume, I can eat up 4g in no time with these size clips – 300mb for only 15 seconds! 3 layers + 1 gig.

Maybe I’ll have to upgrade to XP64.

[Steve Roberts]

You should use NTFS for your drives.

However, if you regularly interface with Mac people with some drives, those drives need to be FAT for cross-platform access.

[Steve Roberts]

[Dave LaRonde] “Nope, it wouldn’t help. “

… because when you compressed the footage before importing into AE, you made it look worse. AE would then open the ugly file and render it to Animation (a lossless codec) making a big, ugly file instead of a big, pretty file.

Okay, maybe not ugly, but degraded, and certainly no smaller.

[Brendan Coots]

Provided you are talking about RAM and not hard drive issues (as Dave points out) 4GB of RAM is enough to do feature film work. It’s all in how you work. And for the record, you may be confused – If you are rendering out files that end up being 8GB in size, that doesn’t mean you need 8GB RAM.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

[David Bogie]

[Richie Tovell] “Hey, I’ve cracked it!!
When I render out as QT movie with the “animation” codec it works, the movies play perfectly in Resolume (The VJ app)and the alpha channels transfer over to the render just fine. Resolume has no problem with them.
“

I’m not familiar with the application nor your use of the term “render.” How does your VJ app process these files? And how many layers can you use at once?

Here’s the thing with Animation files, they’re huge. Not just big, freakin’ huge. And decompressing them to run through an app in real time requires tremendous power from CPU, GPU, and your drive access speeds. Not many RAIDs can play even two streams of Animation.

bogiesan

[Richie Tovell]

Sure I understand that, Resolume is a live video app for live video performance, the problem is nothing to do with overall composition length it’s Ram and CPU processing. the compositions have between 4 – 8 layers approx, plus Audio and visual effects and I’m only running 32bit XP, so I only have 3gig.

I have to keep file sizes small or I’ll hit playback problems.