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View Full Version : Compressing sequence of TGA images as movie

ankuragarwal
06-13-2005, 01:59 PM
I have been trying to compress a composition in an avi format file using any one of the options

included in the Adobe After Effects 6.0 Pro and couldn't determine the correct setting. I want

that the film's compression(consists of a sequence of Targa images, and the composition amounts

to a total of 5 minutes film, at 24 fps) does not unduly affect the picture quality and yet be

small enough that it could be burned into a 700 MB CD-ROM and be played from most of the

CD-Drives.

I tried the Cinepak compression with keying at every 24 frames, but the picture quality wasn't

that great and also, the brightness varies intermittently (cinepak reduced the size of the

render to 130 MB, which was estimated at around 6.2 GB if uncompressed).The render was at

640x480 resolution, and I would like to keep it the same.Also, playback from the CD drive is

poor. What other options to try ? I tried nearly all , but couldn't find the right one. I also

tried rendering a quicktime, but strangely no sound was forthcoming(the video quality was

good). Can anyone help, many thanks.

There is no hard and fast rule for me that I want an avi only, a mov or a mpeg file will also

do. Also, any other softwares for compressing?
Yossarian!
06-17-2005, 07:09 AM
Hi ankuragarwal,

Avoid cinepak at all costs. I gather it was pretty big in the early to mid 90's as a delivery format for thumbnail sized video on CD's, but as you've found out the quality and colour reproduction is hopeless.

For 5 minutes in 700 megs your best bet may be the AVI Indeo 4/5.1 codecs. The quality will be a little smurfier than an uncompressed AVI, but that's just the price to pay to fit it on a CD. You may need to tinker with the quality a little to come in under 700 megs. And I read somewhere you should untick the keyframe and framerate limiter boxes (don't know why, though, anyone?).

Your other option is to go with a high bandwidth MPEG2, or the DIVX/XVID codecs, but you'll need to download these yourself and tinker with the settings. If the encode settings are right it will be hard to tell the difference between these and an Indeo file, IMO.
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