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+ | ======Choosing a Video Format for Your Animation====== | ||
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+ | Choosing a method of encoding your animation for video playback is one of the most complicated and difficult problems you will face when you first start producing video. | ||
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+ | First, some basics. | ||
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+ | It is crucially important to save the sequence of images once you render an animation because each type of video format throws away an enormous amount of data from the original renderings. | ||
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+ | =====Codecs and formats===== | ||
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+ | Most video players are able to cope with a large number of video formats. | ||
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+ | Windows Media Player: | ||
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+ | Apple Quicktime: | ||
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+ | As you can see, MPEG and AVI are the common formats. | ||
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+ | =====Video formats===== | ||
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+ | ====Video for Windows (AVI)==== | ||
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+ | The AVI file format is the format of the Video for Windows system -- a rather out of date video platform. | ||
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+ | That said, there are some excellent modern codecs available - including the popular DivX ([[http:// | ||
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+ | It is best to avoid AVI completely unless you have complete control over all playback targets. | ||
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+ | DivX is also a good choice for transferring video to other formats (such as WMV or Quicktime) by re-encoding since it is high quality. | ||
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+ | Note that the open source XVid codec is also a popular choice for AVI encoding, but is less prevalent on computers. | ||
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+ | ====Quicktime (MOV)==== | ||
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+ | Apple' | ||
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+ | That said, the Quicktime format is standardized in the way that AVI and its codec mess is not. You can pretty much guarantee that an animation encoded with Quicktime will run on Quicktime anywhere so long as the user has a fairly up-to-date version of the player. | ||
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+ | To create a Quicktime video you will need the Quicktime Pro product which you can buy from www.apple.com. | ||
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+ | ====MPEG==== | ||
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+ | MPEG is an evolving format supported by most players. | ||
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+ | Modern MPEG4 video is very high quality and it is the technology behind DivX, Quicktime, and WMV. Yet, tough licensing conditions have meant that the pure MPG format has never caught on. It is tricky to find encoding software to produce this kind of video. Yet, high end programs such as Adobe Premiere should have no problem. | ||
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+ | ====Windows Media (WMV)==== | ||
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+ | Windows Media is another excellent high quality format. | ||
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+ | The difficulty with this format is that you need to use Windows Media Encoder (available as a free download from Microsoft) to produce these files from the original files. | ||
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+ | ====Flash==== | ||
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+ | A relative newcomer on the scene is Macromedia, Adobe' | ||
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+ | Macromedia is already claiming that nearly 95% of Internet browsers are enabled with this technology, so this might actually be an excellent method of delivering high quality cross-platform video in the future. | ||
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