Whats the best codec to use?
 

Whats the best video codec and settings overall to render out to, to keep quality at the max before you take any footage into a video editing package etc?

Don't render it to video. Simply output as an uncompressed TIFF image sequence. That way, you're not dropping any quality at all going into your video editing package.


Also, bear in mind the aspect ratio and resolution of your target media. The closer you can get your render to what is required at this initial stage, the less headaches and higher quality you'll have at the other end of the pipeline.

I heard of doing it this way but i've never tried it, isn't it a bit of a pain dealing with all the images in a video editing package? Say premiere for instance, how do you go about loading them all in, can you just select them all and load them all in, in one go?

When you go to add video to the bin in Premiere, there should be a checkbox in the import dialog to signify that the files are part of a numbered sequence. Simply select the first file with this box checked, and assuming all your files follow the format <filename><number>.<ext> (eg: vid_0001.tif -> vid_0132.tif) then it will know that they all belong as part of the same object. From then on, as far as Premiere is concerned, this is simply a video file.

Great thanks! i'll give it a try. Does it happen to take any longer to render using this method btw? I set up a few test renders to output as TIFF images and the rendering time seemed to go up a bit.

No, there should be next to no difference to the render times. If anything, rendering as uncompressed tiff files should shorten the render time (if only by milliseconds) since you don't have the added step of a video codec to compress the frame and add it to the movie to worry about...

I was told on cgtalk by almost everyone to use tga's - are you saying that tiffs are better? I dont compress either way anyways...

It doesn't really matter which you use. As long as they can be read by your compositing/video package. Just use whatever works for you.

Hey chrispo, i remember seeing a post of yours on the newtek forum, i asked about what textures u used for your floor. Did you get your 10 minute animation finished?

Do not render to video. I just did a commercial (Lightwave) for Anheurser-Busch and even the ad agency specifically asked for a Targa strip. They're a breeze to work with in any NLE.

Ok, thanks for the info. I'll stick to the targa strips.

Another nice point about rendering individual frames is if your system crashes in on frame 1199/1200 you dont lose a whole night's work :)

I am told this is how PIXAR does its rendering as well.

ahh its been ticking me off when i render one pic in 12 min then companies like pixar and Square do hours of video.

kept thinking they had some beasts of machines..makes sence now.

ill have to post my free video editing program i used here when i test it out for this use.

From what i have heard it takes Pixar about a year to render out the whole movie ...

Actually, since they produced a movie in a year, i think the actual rendering of it took less than that.

Don't forget about render farms.

According to Pixar's site, for Monster's Inc:
Each frame (at 24 fps) took around 6 hours to render, though some frames took up to 90 hours

However, they have hundreds (maybe thousands?) of computers rendering at least that many frames at a time.

So let's say they have 500 computers, and their estimate of an average of 6 hours per frame is usable:

Every 24 hours(1 day) 12,000 frames could be produced

12,000 frames @ 24 fps equals 500 seconds = 8 1/3 minutes per day

Monsters Inc. is 116 Minutes

at this rate, the full movie could be rendered in 13.92 days... about 2 weeks

test..
 

i tried this and it looked awsome uncompressed but to get an uploadable file i had to compress it a little too much, plus i had a crash and had to compress a compression..

was done using "image forge 3"

http://home.1asphost.com/elder/noEld...mageForge3.tsf

download the file, change .tsf to .zip, unzip.