Render using JPEG Sequence

[Todd Kopriva]

Animation is a lossless codec. Really lossless, not just “perceptually” lossless. But the compression isn’t so great for photorealistic images, so the files tend to still be quite large… unless the images are large expanses of uniform color, like in a cartoon. Animation rocks for, well, animations.

JPEG is a lossy codec, but it’s quite efficient. The images will lose some information, but the files will be a _lot_ smaller. It’s designed for photorealistic images, _not_ for sharp graphics, like vector graphics.

You said ‘JPEG sequence’. Just to be clear, an image sequence is a sequence of many, many separate files: one per frame. You cna also use the JPEG codec within a QuickTime container, so you just have one movie file, but with the frames inside of it encoded with JPEG.

And ProRes is a pretty advanced family of codecs that makes good tradeoffs between image quality and file size for professional video.

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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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[Walter Soyka]

[Aaron Nowakowski] ” was wondering what the difference is using a JPEG Sequence as my format selection? Is there a quality difference compared to an Animation or Apple Pro Res 422?”

As Todd mentioned, JPEG is lossy. You might consider a PNG sequence instead of a JPEG sequence — PNG uses lossless compression.

One other consideration: ProRes 422 is a 10-bit codec, while Animation, PNG, and JPEG are all 8-bit.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Aaron Nowakowski]

Thanks Todd…great explanation, makes total sense.