So I'm entirely new to this game but hoped some kindly experienced people would twist my ignoble nose in the right direction.
I'm trying to make my first animation. I'm using a series photoshop graphics to create frames for an animation to a friends music video that i'm compiling into scenes using AVIedit. Them I import these into Free AVID to edit them together into a complete animation. Finally I run the completed AVI through VirtualDub to add some filters.
I'm ending up with massive file sizes in the 500meg range before virtual dub and 6gig (yes 6 GB) avi's after.
Now obviously I should be compressing these somewhere along the way and am currently experiementing.
1) Can anyone recomend a best route for preserving quality until the last stage? I am creating BMPs in photoshop should I use JPGs or TGAs?
2) The animation is pretty simple and uses lots of wide areas of the same colour. Surely there's a codec that can compress this super small without significant loss of picture?
3) Any other adivce?
Thanks
BMPs are huge....needlessly at that.
im not familiar with any of those programs other than photoshop though. so....
check the output settings for different outputs or compression types.
"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo
sorry don't know much about what you know so...
first, worry-free advice but involving money: buy a dvd-writer.
cheap, multi-talented, good investment for anyone with
animation/video/graphics inclination. you can publish your
work in DVD-video for other people/client/employer.
a second hard drive won't hurt, esp. if you do much sfx.
back them up and free your disk space.
second, no money advice but tweakish:
make sure your dpi is 72 to 100 only. check this in Photoshop's
image size menu.
a good alternative to bmp is tif with the compression turned on.
downside is not all apps read this because there's so many ways
of writing this that they don't bother with it. png is good too,
but also same downside. avoid jpeg for a while.
i've got two files of the same drawing: tif with lzw compression
is 365kb while tga with rle compression turned on is 431kb.
bmp is 860kb-- twice.
when you've compile it into video, use a lossless codec.
compile it into Quicktime, use animation codec and set to
millions+ colors. this will preserve your alpha channel so when
you composite your animation to some background or live video
it's easier.
avoid lossy compression and codecs before compositing,
as i'm sure you're aware. Quicktime can get your images, compile
them to video, while preserving transparency. And it does simple
trims and splices.
know your target resolution and don't go beyond it needlessly.
Don't worry. All shall be well.
Already sounds like great advice thanks,
Do have a DVD writer already so that's good.
1) If i'm aiming eventually at TV, what should my target resolution be?
2) Any advice on speeding up photoshop batch jobs. e.g. I'm sure i used to be able to stop it displaying every 'run through' an action. But can't seem to find a tick box now.(using photoshop 6.0)
thanks