-
Image Sequences
Hello everyone. I
-
10 Replies
-
Hi Felgue
I’m racking my brains about why you might want to do this, and can’t really think of one.
Your workflow sounds like:
Edit(Quicktime DV) -> After Effects -> Rendered (Quicktime DV)to your edit -> Output
By exporting out as an image sequence after the edit stage you won’t inherently be gaining anything as opposed to exporting out as a By Reference Quicktime (or using something like Automatic Duck) to get you into After Effects. What you want to avoid doing is to render or transcode through lossy codecs too often. DV is already highly compressed.
Use image sequences if your output method requires it, but not arbitrarily. Image sequences are not “better” than Quicktime movies – a Quicktime movie can use a lossless codec (eg Animation) or lossy (eg DV or the highly lossy H264) just as an image sequence can be lossless (eg Targa) or lossy (JPEG).
Bottom line – don’t try to complicate your life. If you’re going in QT DV, work as far as you can with your original QT DV file, without transcoding/rerendering unnecessarily.
Oops, this is already a longer post than I intended, but I hope I’ve been clear enough.
Ben
Curious Turtle Professional Video
Training | Editing |Support -
thanks for the answer and the advice. I
-
Image sequences slow things down in AE too. Better to stick with a movie file.
Some good reasons to use image sequences:
1) To keep file size down (JPEG sequence, for example)
2) To make it easier to store them on DVD
3) They can contain certain 3D data that video files can’t
4) Multi Machine rendering – can only be done with image sequences
5) You use a DDR system that can only accept image sequences and not video (I worked at a company that had this)—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911
-
Didn’t realise TGA seqs (or similar) slowed AE down – thanks for that tip!
I’ve been wondering whether to go the AVI or TGA sequence route since I got my Decklink. I used to grab/playout via a clipstation which only accepted targas, but I now have to grab to AVI in Premiere I believe, but we are thinking of getting a Smoke as our main NLE sometime soon and I understand they only read image sequences?
TGA seqs are useful if you need to break off from rendering temporarily and if you have a crash you can still salvage the frames that did render, but AFAIK you can’t do that with a video file? It is easier for me to pull out a ref still frame into Photoshop with TGAs aswell..
..HOWEVER, there is the problem though that most image sequences don’t hold any PAR info, so you have to keep re-interpreting the footage when you bring it into an app. Plus you have to render a separate wav file for audio.
I’ve never really touched QT for AE work…is there any benefit using them instead of AVI on a PC?
*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0 -
benefit of QT over avi on a pc? probably none really, unless you have to be compatible with mac. Otherwise I’d stick with avi
-
If you only have the choice between Uncompressed avi or Quicktime animation compression (A lossless codec), always go with Quicktime. Files can be quite small comparetively.
Uncompressed AVI is a pointeless format, since there are now lossless AVI compression codecs.
—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911
-
So Aharon,
When you say ‘lossless’ codecs are they TOTALLY uncompressed? There must be some slight degradation if you are gaining smaller file sizes?
If not and using a lossless AVI codec instead of true uncompressed, is there still any benefit in QT over AVI? Will AE in turn also run faster if my file sizes are smaller comparatively? I think I’d rather use AVI unless there’s some big gain with QT, as some of our systems are a little iffy with QT (Newtek VideoToaster, Premiere to an extent? and I have a feeling Lightwave prefers AVI…)
Thanks for your advice,
Jim.*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0 -
A lossless codec is a codec that does not lose any quality in the compression process.
You have to understand that there is a difference between compression and codecs. Some codecs are designed for the web – That means they are designed to keep the filesizde low enough that they can be shared over the web. Those codecs lose quality – they are lossy codecs – right now (technology being as it is) we haven;t come up with a lossless codec good enough for the web, that is also available on all computers.
On the other hand, a lossless codec is a codec that doesn;t get the file size donw to web sizes, but that significantly lowers the file size through compression algorythms. If you have cartoonish animation or text over a solid background, animation Codec can reduce the file size dramatically. If your using high motion video, not as much.
Read this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_codec
And then click on the link ion there for “Run Length encoding.” It explains how the Quicktime Animation Codec works in compression.
The point is that some codecs better than others for certian things. but you almost never want to render as AVI uncompressed. There’s no reason to do it.
—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911
-
Thanks Aharon,
I knew what a codec was, just wondered if lossless ones really were lossless, but I guess it depends on your footage.. I’ll keep it uncompressed for now for maximum compatibility with other machines, but will look into it for the future. Cheers.
*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0 -
A lossless codec is ALWAYS lossless. It has nothing to do with the footage. The codec never loses data, period.
But in some cases, you don’t trim file sizes down as much. But there is no reason to work with uncompressed video. I have never worked anywhere or with anyone that used uncompressed AVI’s.
Any machine with quicktime will be able to use Quicktime with the Animation compression codec.
—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up