Problem with the Animation Codec?

[Greg Burrus]

From my experience the idea a behind the animation codec is that it is a lossless format thus you loose almost no quality when you render. The down side is it renders out large files and typical does not play well in media players on computers, especially at HD. I’m not sure about the color aspect of it since other formats do display more colors, though it does let you use alpha channels which is one of the reasons I always used it.

I have used it when rendering broadcast graphics that are to be used in final cut that later on will be render to another format or tape. Though if your going to put your work directly online then animation wouldn’t be the best codec to use.

I found this forum post here that talks about it a bit https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/961973
and wiki…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_codec

hope this helps

Greg

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[Todd Kopriva]

> It’s a default setting in AE. It must be for a reason?

Because it loses no image information when encoding from an 8-bpc source.

See these FAQ entries for information about export settings:
“What is the best format for rendering and exporting from After Effects?”
“Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly…?”
The second of these covers the downsides of using a lossless codec like Animation.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Zeke Meginsky]

Okay. A follow up question. Is there any reason why I should export footage interlaced or to lower or upper field? I’m confused by fields and why I would export interlaced.. would interlaced be smoother? As far as fields, I don’t know which field to use or if I should use one at all. I have things with upper and lower fields in my FCP project (some footage was taken from DVDs that originally had upper fields, and some from DV tapes that obviously use lower). Will that an issue?

[Todd Kopriva]

> Is there any reason why I should export footage interlaced or to lower or upper field?

Only export interlaced files if your intended playback device uses interlacing. Determine what the specifications of the playback device are.

Here’s a video that I made to introduce video fields and interlacing.

Read this page and follow the links on it to learn about fields and interlacing in After Effects.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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