Hey Andy
I agree with randy johnson, because (to me) there are two main reason to render image sequences and not movies:
1) you could already see mistakes in the first frames of the animation
2) if your computer crashes, only the frame he was working on is lost, and not the whole movie, you have been probably rendering since 2 days…
so mostly to check only the animation, I render a so called editor-rendering, where no lights or textures are rendered. You just see what you already see in the editor, but in realtime! Huge advantage!
Still I render only image sequences. I never do movie renderings. But I guess that could be part of your own personal “taste” of workflow.
kind regards, Dominik.
http://www.phirstfilm.com
Phirstfilm Productions GmbH
film and animation for business solutions
Zurich, Switzerland