Best ways to Output in AE?

[Mylenium]

However, I'd like it if I could get an avi or mpeg video as small as that. Is there a way?

Nope. not from inside AE, anyways.

Outside of that, does anyone know how to output something that would work well in Power Point,

WMV, WMV, and WMV. *lol* Everything else is a waste of time.

The rest is a bit too complex to explain in detail , but all your HD output will hinge on how you want to play it back and for what it's going to be used. There's no general rule. H.264 works okay on computers, bu tso does WMV. For BluRay you also need H.264 or MPEG-II HD, for editing apps you wil lrender uncompressed or to their naitive CoDecs.

Mylenium

[mjkennedy]

The rest is a bit too complex to explain in detail , but all your HD output will hinge on how you want to play it back and for what it's going to be used. There's no general rule. H.264 works okay on computers, bu tso does WMV. For BluRay you also need H.264 or MPEG-II HD, for editing apps you wil lrender uncompressed or to their naitive CoDecs.

Mylenium

Well, I want my HD footage to be both viewable on a computer, and in a lossless form for broadcast... and in a lossless form for archives.

Any ideas on what would be the best way to accomplish either of those 3 objectives? My original images are in Targa format, so perhaps a targa "image sequence" would be best for lossless archive? Or should I just keep the original targa images?

As for the other two, I'm not sure.

Thanks,

Matt

[mjkennedy]

WMV, WMV, and WMV. *lol* Everything else is a waste of time.


I tried exporting in wmv, but I just get a bunch of sqiggly lines when I try to play it. As well, the file size is still qutie large. Is there a file size limit for power point?

If you could give me some proper settings to use when exporting wmv it would be greatly appreciated!

Matt

[Mylenium]

I tried exporting in wmv, but I just get a bunch of sqiggly lines when I try to play it. As well, the file size is still qutie large. Is there a file size limit for power point?

Then re-install Windows Media Player. Most likely some silly tool or alternate player messed up the CoDecs. If the files get to large, then your data rates are too high. For SD footage, 4.5 Mbit/sec is more than sufficient (40 MB per minute approx.), for HD you should not need more than 12 MBit/sec (85 MB per minute approx.). PowerPoint doesn't care about file sizes or resolutions. As long as you can play it smoothly, it's safe to use. PP simply snatches the Media Player components and draws video in an overaly window with full Direct Draw support and hardware acceleration.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

Well, I want my HD footage to be both viewable on a computer, and in a lossless form for broadcast... and in a lossless form for archives.

Any ideas on what would be the best way to accomplish either of those 3 objectives?

They are mutually exclusive. Either you want to archive at maximum quality or playback smoothly. Neither can be achieved with the other. For archiving, make it a habbit to render to OpenEXR - small file sizes, maximum fidelity and all in one image sequence (if your 3D program supports multipass in OpenEXR). Alternatively, use lossless, wavelet-based compression as found in JPEG 2000 or several commercial video CoDecs.

For broadcast, ask whoever is handling this at the TV station or authoring facility. They are very picky and you won't get away with some poorly compressed H.264 that does not comply to their specs. Many TV stations even refuse tapes with improper labeling, just on a sidenote... The same is true for authoring - a decent facility will check your file and see if the streams are properly encoded to the MPEG profiles. They, too, will refuse to use them if they are not suitable and ask you for an uncompressed source instead and do the encoding themselves - at extra cost, of course.

Obviously desktop playback is the easiest part of the equation, so use whatever your computer can handle.

Mylenium

[mjkennedy]

They are mutually exclusive. Either you want to archive at maximum quality or playback smoothly. Neither can be achieved with the other. For archiving, make it a habbit to render to OpenEXR - small file sizes, maximum fidelity and all in one image sequence (if your 3D program supports multipass in OpenEXR). Alternatively, use lossless, wavelet-based compression as found in JPEG 2000 or several commercial video CoDecs.

For broadcast, ask whoever is handling this at the TV station or authoring facility. They are very picky and you won't get away with some poorly compressed H.264 that does not comply to their specs. Many TV stations even refuse tapes with improper labeling, just on a sidenote... The same is true for authoring - a decent facility will check your file and see if the streams are properly encoded to the MPEG profiles. They, too, will refuse to use them if they are not suitable and ask you for an uncompressed source instead and do the encoding themselves - at extra cost, of course.


I'm using XSI. So when I render off my scene, using OpenEXR would be a good choice? When I go to render in that format in XSI, there's two options: "half float" and "float". What does that mean? And what one should I use?

Also, again, is it better to render off a "OpenEXR sequence" for archive? Or should I just keep the individual EXR frames I rendered out of XSI?

As well, as I metioned before I think, I'm currently rendering off in TGA format... just out of curiosity, what's wrong with Targa?


As for broadcast. I won't actually be dealing with the broadcast company themselves. I'm developing some video work for a client, and they said they want the ability to put it on HD TV if the need arises. Thus, is there any standard guidelines, so that I can give them something that has a good chance of making it on TV if they want it.

Is there a stardard HD format? I know there's HD 1920x1080 and HD 1280x720. Is one better to use than the other?


Sorry for all the quesitons, but I still have a lot to learn about outputing and rendering! :rolleyes:

Matt

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