Export/Rendering Problem....

[erilaz]

I have also tried using uncomressed animation sequences but still notice some loss.
Is there anything i can do within After Effects to stop this?

Thanks

If you're noticing quality loss on an 'uncompressed' file, then it's either not a lossless format, or your original footage was not good to begin with. If you've already compressed the format you rendered to, it's not going to improve in after effects.

[hazamon]

is there a way i can stop the whole composition being compressed again tho, as these files have already been compressed in 3DS Max?

[Mylenium]

Is there a way to tell After Effects not to compress a file that has already been compressed within another application (in this case 3DS Max 8.0).

No. AE is a compositing app, not a transcoder. All frames will be expanded to full RGBA pixels and any existing compression that manifests itself as blocks and other artefacts will become part of that frame buffer. When it's recompressed, they cause even more artifacts because in AE's view they are valid pixels of the image.

As for the rest - you can't have both - the most pristine quality and smooth playback. Not in AE, anyway. If you really need pixel perfect compression, AE is simply the wrong tool as is MAX. You need a dedicated conversion/ transcoding tool such as Cleaner, ProCoder or others. Even then you have to accept that the compression being a lossy one you never can exclude any artifactrs appearing. It's the nature of the beast.

Mylenium

[dell]

Why do you need to compress within max, export the files as uncompressed TIFFs. Then export via AFX to the video format you want.

[rhodeder]

Yeah I agree with dell Dont compress the original files just export them as a tiff seq they will export at floating point and you wont lose any quality. I dont know why people try using codecs if your trying to keep quality. Just set the codec to none which is no codec. If you really need to conserve file size use a mpeg-4 codec at full quality h264 tends to blow out colors and make everything brighter.

[hazamon]

Hi,

The only reason i compress within max is to reduce the file size.....right now i'm test rendering at resolution of (490x270) 16:9 aspect ratio for a series of clips that in total will make up 5-6 mins worth of rendered animation.....

I recently rendered out an uncompressed animation clip lasting over 30 secs at (29.97 fps) which produced a file size of almost 200MB!!

My final output is intended to be resolution of (1280x720).....so i can't even imagine the file sizes of that.

The other problem is that even when i export uncompressed animations e.g. TGA sequence wrapped up in Quicktime, i still manage to get random pixelation during playback even tho viewing the exact same sequence in RAM Player/Preview shows no image quality loss.

I tried to reinstall Quicktime Pro to see if the problem could be fixed that way but still no luck....!

Anyone got any clues to this problem?

Thanks

[rhodeder]

are you loading the image seq in quicktime or are you turning it to a mov file then opening it?

[hospadam]

If you want the best possible results (quality), and the lowest possible file size, using only AE and Max, this should be your workflow:

Render your full resolution animation out of Max at the highest quality possible, using uncompressed 32bit TGA's. These will give you the best possible image you will ever have from that point on. (THink of this process as one way. Once you compress something... it can never get any better, quality wise, than it is at that point).

At this point, you have to realize you'll have quite a lot of images (6 min x 30 frames/sec = approx 11,000 frames). Depending on what resolution you use, you could have each one of those frames be anywhere from 500k to 10 megs a piece. If disk space is an issue for you... I'm not sure what to tell you. Go buy an external drive for the time being :). You have to accept that video (in uncompressed form) takes up massive disk space.

Ok, so, at this point you should have your full-res image sequence. Import that into AE as an image sequence. You now have your full res movie into AE. You haven't had to compress anything (leaving full quality), and you can still manipulate it like you would if it were a quicktime movie, or any other video format. Do all the stuff you wanna do inside AE and then, ultimately you'll be ready to render.

At this point, you need to ask yourself several questions. How much compression do you actually need? Are you going to be making a DVD out of the movie? Putting this sequence into another movie? Uploading it to the web? Playing it off of a laptop? E-mail it to a friend?

All of these have different compression needs, and as such, are all different cases. I'd recomend using quicktime with the sorrensen 3 codec, at "best" settings, and set keyframes to 1 every 30 frames. This should get you a fairly good looking movie, with good compression.

Good luck.

[Mylenium]

The only reason i compress within max is to reduce the file size....

Forgive me for being so straight, but that's a pretty lame excuse. Anybody who ventures into the field of computergraphics knows/ should know that all those pixels need to be stored somewhere and if quality is a requirement, it will be a lot of storage that is required. On the other hand you can get 200 GB disks for 100 bucks or something.

So do the math: Does working with compressed footage have any benefits at all these days? Is the trouble in trying to avoid further artifacts worth it? Does the extra work required to get rid of artifacts, color shifts etc. justify it? How does having a few megabytes less on the disc compare to that? I'm sorry to say so, this is a mere workflow issue which you simply have not considered.

For what it's worth: Get a bigger/ extra disc, work uncompressed. Create intermediates/ proxies fpr previewing and maintaining maximum interactivity during work and replace the footage with the original image sequences for final output.

As for your QT problems: Most likely it's eitehr a data rate problem (your disk to slow) or a graphics card problem. You could try to use the GDI compatibility mode and turn of DirectDraw for the latter.

Mylenium

[beenyweenies]

Forgive me for being so straight, but that's a pretty lame excuse. Anybody who ventures into the field of computergraphics knows/ should know that all those pixels need to be stored somewhere and if quality is a requirement, it will be a lot of storage that is required. On the other hand you can get 200 GB disks for 100 bucks or something.

So do the math: Does working with compressed footage have any benefits at all these days? Is the trouble in trying to avoid further artifacts worth it? Does the extra work required to get rid of artifacts, color shifts etc. justify it? How does having a few megabytes less on the disc compare to that? I'm sorry to say so, this is a mere workflow issue which you simply have not considered.

For what it's worth: Get a bigger/ extra disc, work uncompressed. Create intermediates/ proxies fpr previewing and maintaining maximum interactivity during work and replace the footage with the original image sequences for final output.
Mylenium

Agree 1,000%. I am amazed at how many people are using $5,000 software (must be cracked) but can't stomach paying $99 USD for a 400GB hard drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148246). I am extremely budget-conscious in all my studio purchase decisions, but large hard disks are so cheap and necessary for production that there's just no excuse.

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