Demo Reel questions

[slueb]

I just did some research on this topic for animation of mine, here is what I found.

First off, I would say worry most about getting a good quicktime file, that seems to be standard for most demo reals/animations because (as far as I know) its the only player that will scrub back and forth frame by frame (something I use all the time when viewing other peoples reels)

So for a good Quicktime file, I tried Sorenson 3 and Apple's .h264 (supposed to be their newer better compression) Sorenson 3 still looked better to me. The file I put on my site was rendered at about 75-80% quality and didn't notice much compression. You might have to play around with the quality a bit, you'd be surprised by how much the size varies.

For audio just pick apples aac compression, its small and supposedly lossless.

If you can get Quicktime Pro, render out of Maya as a .mov animation (no compression), then open it with Quicktime and export it with different compressions until you get what you want. That way your not going to have to re-render a bunch of times out of Maya.

Also to see what other people have done with their reels(in Quicktime) go up to window/show movie inspector. That will tell you the codec they used, and how big their file was.

Hope this helps.

[Gaboon]

Sluuuuuuueb...thank you! I got sorenson 4 and it is awesome. I tried to go to your site to see the quality of your video, but couldn't :(. I am going to try to upload the video on my site, but I don't know what is the typical or acceptable file size. Anyone know what is the standard? Thanks again Slueb :)

[slueb]

Yeah I wasn't too sure about acceptable size either... I just looked at some demo reals I had downloaded and judged their size/resolution/length and then decided what would be acceptable for mine based on that.

I did notice last night that my quicktime file wasn't downloading correctly... I think I might not have the file set to internet stream or something... Once I find out I'll get back to you

[slueb]

Yeah, just make sure you've got the export set for internet streaming, or else it won't play in the browser. You should be able to see it on my site now. Good luck with everything

[PredatorGSR]

The way that works the best for me is to render out targa sequences from Maya, and put them together in AfterEffects, and render out as .mov files using medium or high quality sorensen 3.

I typically render out 3 versions, (HD)1280x720, (Med)720x405, and (Small)480x270. I also render out a 720x480 version for dvds which is slightly squashed but not really noticeable. I include the high quality version on the dvd for interviews, and the medium and small I upload to my website.

Size wise, Medium size I keep under 20-25 MBs after being zipped. Small is under 10 MB. HD size doesn't really matter as its not really web friendly anyway, its usually around 100-150mb. This is for a 1-1:30 min reel.

Hope that helps.

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