<< The codec question >>
 

Im sick of seeing these, and here I am typing one!

Im making a 10 min anim for dvd in d1.
What type of codec should I use to edit it with to keep the quality?

I usually use tga sequences, but I could be going the wrong way about doing this...


Help would be really appreciated!

hi

well i always do videos for my dvd's as mpeg 2's.
but i only convert it to mpeg2 once i have the final render.
otherwise i generaly keep them to animation codec wich is heavy but good quality.

hope that helps

Your master renders should really always be left as 32bit uncompressed TGA image sequences or similar to maintain the image quality.

Only when downsampling to the final animation after post and comp should you be thinking about codec. I'd strongly suggest going with DivX for PC based animation. Otherwise, Sorensen is a reputable MPEG encoder for DVDs.

what he said
lol

Righty then, Q. do the professionals use tga sequences?

Yes the reason they use TGA 32bit Uncompressed is because its a lossless file format. Meaning every pixel and bit of information is saved in the file format where if you compress it with any codec it will toss out information that you might need later to maintain quality when you do a transfer. The more codecs you apply to images and sequences the more information you loose.

Nice1, I imagined it to be some holy grail of a lossless file, but TGA's can be compressed - we use them in print. Oh, just read what you typed, UNCOMPRESSED.... Ok. Home time.