[Richie Tovell]

I dunno, if anyone ever googl’s this thread, I feel I may be able to offer some advice, I tested about 6 different Codecs that can all handle alpha for AVI’s and for Quicktime, though what worked for me may not work for you, this is what I deduced:

Quicktime

Animation codec: was only average in my opinion, it seemed to reduce quality more than file size.

Huffy: was troublesome to install and didn’t work for me.

Sheer, was a nightmare, clips rendered with it wouldn’t play at all.

There were some other’s that were pretty obscure and dind’t work either, finaly the codec that worked for me was. . . . . .

Avid’s Meridien compressed codec (it’s free too).

It got the file sizes down the lowest I’ve seen, a 400 mb clip would be reduced to something around 40 mb (with no loss of image quality at all) none, Animation codec would drop a file size like that (400 mb) to only around 350 mb, whilst not even managing to keep the picture quality even half decent.

So there you go, plus the rendered clips will run in Resolume (if thats of any significance to you 🙂

https://avidtechnology.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/avidtechnology.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=71356

Enjoy.

[Richie Tovell]

Hey thanks Rhett I’ll give it another shot.

Regards Richie.

[Richie Tovell]

Ahh, now I had problems getting huffy to actually install, can you direct me to a site that you know you can download a cosha version, if you can that would be a big help.

The problem I think was that the version I downloaded didn’t have any set up file, it was just some data files and read me text, I couldn’t workout where to put the files from what I downloaded.

Any clues?

[Richie Tovell]

I gave it a shot, but the movies I rendered with it won’t play in any meedia players or the VJ app, it’s a shame because I know this codec works for a lot of people.

Thanks for the pointer though, I may still be able to get it to work.

[Richie Tovell]

Cool, oh no it deffinately processes Alpha channels and it works very well with them, it’s not colour keying. It’s about the most advanced AV app out there at the momen’t, If your interested in it give it a download, it comes with a demo project, if you do, there are a couple of very nice effect’s in that app that you should have a look at 1 being: “Pixels in space” 2 being: Luma waves. (These are the new Free Frame Effects) created with Open GL.

I’m really cool now though, I’ve sorted out everything I needed to, the animation compression I’m using to render my projects with is compressing them to a reasonable size (about half of what I originally thought). I also treied the Huffy compression but it wouldn’t play ball. but I’m cool with the animation.

Thanks all of you for your help, I’ll be getting back to work now. 😉

[Richie Tovell]

Resolume is a really cool little live video app, it has some awsome FFGL effects, unlimited layers, host’s audio VST’s and is fully midi controllable.

https://www.resolume.com/avenue/features.php

My only problem at the moment is this animation codec, as virtually every layer will have to have alpha channels I’ll have to find a better file format or compression technique.

[Richie Tovell]

Resolume is a really cool little live video app, it has some awsome FFGL effects, unlimited layers, host’s audio VST’s and is fully midi controllable.

https://www.resolume.com/avenue/features.php

My only problem at the moment is this animation codec, as virtually every layer will have to have alpha channels I’ll have to find a better file format or compression technique.

[Richie Tovell]

Sure I understand that, Resolume is a live video app for live video performance, the problem is nothing to do with overall composition length it’s Ram and CPU processing. the compositions have between 4 – 8 layers approx, plus Audio and visual effects and I’m only running 32bit XP, so I only have 3gig.

I have to keep file sizes small or I’ll hit playback problems.

[Richie Tovell]

lol, well it was worth a try.

It’s the apps that are limited not my starage, AFX can only access 4 gig, to small for serious compositions.

Same with Resolume, I can eat up 4g in no time with these size clips – 300mb for only 15 seconds! 3 layers + 1 gig.

Maybe I’ll have to upgrade to XP64.

[Richie Tovell]

What would happen If I pre-compressed the footage before it goes in to the composition? Then re render with the added alpha channel.

Could that get the file size down?