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LED sign – best choice of file save type?
I’m making custom 7 second consecutive ads (there is about 28 of them) for an LED Sign. I use after effects and a macbook pro 13″.
The LED sign matrix is 144 (H) x 64 (W) and i’ve been instructed to use a 720 x 320 px file size.The problem arises when I go to render as an .avi as I’ve been instructed but it does not allow me to in either after effects or media encoder.
I’ve been saving the files as the default .mov. Will this file type be safe to use on the sign with no lag or other issues? If not, what do you suggest I use?
(Additionally, I do not have the budget to purchase new software.)
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3 Replies
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If you can, try and talk with the LED sign guys that will be loading your animation into the LED board software/hardware to find out exactly what they can take.
It’s been my experience that they always request uncompressed AVI, but will take Quicktime or even MP4.
If you want to try and send a MOV, use an old standard codec like Photo-JPEG, and send it early so if there is an issue, you’ll have time to fix it. I do stadium boards every year, and the same guys that do the football stadium, do the baseball field and several other arenas in the area, so they could be at a different site each day, and if your file does;t work when they need it, they may have trouble recovering.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
You indeed CAN export AVI’s on a Mac using Quicktime Player 7 and the proper codecs. You just need the QT component. Last month I ran out 6 or 7 AVI’s for the Cardinals. Running this on Yosemite btw.
Eric Bowman
AssemblyCreative.com
EricSBowman.com -
Found the command to enable AVI for you.
1) Make sure you have QuickTime 7 installed, this will not work with the new Quicktime Player. As long as you have that installed, and you DO NOT see the option on export to select AVI proceed.
2) Open Terminal, copy and paste this command, then hit enter:
qtdefaults write LegacyVideoCodecs AppleCinepak enabled3) You’ll see a message stating that Apple Cinepak has been enabled. Relaunch QT 7 and you can now export to a Cinepak codec AVI file.
Good luck! I realize that a lot of the “scoreboard” guys can get along fine with MOV files, but some are stuck in their ways. I feel it’s often easier to just give them what they want rather than explain how the MOV is perfectly fine. Hope this helps.
Eric Bowman
AssemblyCreative.com
EricSBowman.com
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