Compression

[Kevin Camp]

i’d probably set the quicktime compression to animation. quicktime’s lossless animation codec can be read by any computer that has quicktime installed. most applications will work with quicktime or convert standard quicktime files to whatever they need.

there are two reason i would go with the animation codec… first it is a lossless codec, meaning you won’t lose any quality. second, it supports and embedded alpha channel, so if your graphic needs to key out, it will be included in the file rather than as separate matte file.

i guess a third reason would be that most people who use after effects use qt’s animation codec as the intermediate codec (the file that goes between an nle and ae, then back again).

if you want a fourth, it encodes and decodes fast, so it works very well in after effects with minimal cpu overhead for encode/decode.

about the only drawbacks of the animation codec is the file size (which can be large for video — but graphics with alphas can be quit small), and it is only an 8 bit-per-channel codec… if you work in 16-bpc often you may want a codec called microcosm. it was developed by digital anarchy, who was recently purchased by red giant. red giant said the codec would be a free download by the end of 2008, but i still couldn’t find it on their site….

microcosm is identical to the animation codec, but it is 16-bpc. it supports lossless compression and an alpha channel. just take note that 16-bpc files are much larger than 8-bpc files. also, if you want other people to read your microcosm encdoed files, they will also need the microcosm codec. if it’s ever available for free, that won’t be a huge problem, but it may be a slight hassle for some.

in short, if you want to keep it simple, use quicktime’s animation codec…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Matt Wilson]

Thank you for the response. This is all very non specific. Maybe what I should be asking is, what would be the most universal compressor setting for the render.

For example I have one graphic that I want to send to many different companies to add to an edit, using different codecs.
Lets say they are all SD but one is using Prores 422 HQ, one is using DV NTSC, DVC PRO, 10 bit, 8 bit, etc.

Which out of the Quicktime compression setting would be most universal?

Thanks again