what codec to output

[Steve Roberts]

For hard drive playback, I like Quicktime Photo-JPEG at about 89% quality, 640×480. Seems to work. Of course, client types might like WMV at the same size.

You should post this in the Compression COW.

[Dotan Baytman]

[Steve Roberts] “For hard drive playback, I like Quicktime Photo-JPEG at about 89% quality, 640×480. Seems to work. Of course, client types might like WMV at the same size.”

what do u mean quicktime photo-jpeg? is it like regular quicktime output?
where is the compression cow?
thanx

[Steve Roberts]

It’s a Quicktime codec. Just pick it in the AE output module. You should learn the basics, dotan.

For the COW, just click the “change forum” button on the top left. Or go to https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_view_posts.cgi?forumid=20 .

[Greg Neumayer]

Steve,
We all start somewhere, and the answers to 90% of our questions here on the Cow are actually in our manuals somewhere. I think Dotan is here to try to learn those basics. Sometimes, though, the obvious just didn’t click in my head, which is why I appreciate being able to double check with people on the Cow. And, yeah, sometimes it’s a stupid question that I was just having a brain-fart about. If a question is too vague or general to warrant a private tutor, maybe you can direct them to the section of the manual that would be most helpful. Should we do our homework before asking general questions? Sure. But sometimes it’s hard to know if what we didn’t know was easy to know, ya know? 🙂
Dotan, you might also want to check into the Creative Calf, which is a section of the site for questions that would be considered part of learning the basics of AE. Check the manual section for rendering on how to get the output you desire. For input on what codec is best for what purpose, that’s a different answer for every movie destination. There’s a really great (dark-blue colored) website that has benchmarks for almost every codec under the sun, but honestly, I’ve lost my bookmark for it, so I’d appreciate if someone could repost a link.

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

[Dotan Baytman]

Hey guys
sorry if it sounds like its a stupid question that can be answerd by reading the manual not that i think its wrong doing that
i didnt ask how to output different codec in AE just which one
but my question was
whats the best codec to post my demo so i can get good quality and good size
and thats not in the manual
so which one do you think?
thanx

[Peter O’connell]

I vote for PhotoJPEG too

Pete

Tuesday; May 2, 2006
11:13 PM

barxseven.com

[Mike Smith]

I’d vote it depends a bit on your target audience.

If it’s a Mac-using community, you can rely on Quicktime – in QT codecs some people like animation as wel as photjpeg, and sorenson has its admirers, and h.264 is excellent but does require the user to have QT7 installed.

If it’s a more business-oriented section of the market, you might want to think about windows media output. Their V9 codec is a good mpeg 4 variant so strong for distribution (if not for later reediting).

If you’re going on to the web, the Flash player is on a significantly higher percentage of systems than QT, WMPlayer or ReelPlayer. Flash 8 supports excellent compression from On2 in streamable flv files – google’s using this format.

And if you’re wanting a sendable reel, why not compress to mpeg2 and send out on DVD – very good portability, cross-platform, supports stand-alone players. PAL and NTSC might be an issue for DVD if you want to send it across regions …