Quicktime compression - recommendations?

[P Retondo]

My Renderworks QT animations are not giving me the image quality I had hoped for. I'm using the "Video" compression type at "best" quality. The range of colors, pixel size, and aliasing don't come close to what I see on screen (72 dpi, presumably) with a static Renderworks display.

Does anyone know whether any of the other QT options can offer better quality? The following image shows a frame captured from the video (which is considerably sharper than what the QT player is showing on screen at the same size!!), compared to a jpeg created directly from the VW rendering. The comparison does show the color banding and lack of shadow gradation in the video as opposed to the jpeg image. BTW, the file size of the VW jpeg times the number of movie frames is approximately equal to the video file size.

The fact that the video player displays much greater aliasing and lack of edge resolution than it's own still frame capture suggests that the quality of the video display itself is a factor. Does anyone have any advice about that issue?

[propstuff]

Pete,

I seem to recall reading (somewhere)that Sorenson was the best option for QT Movies.

Perhaps it was in the documentation for OzCads AnimationWorks. (which, BTW, you should get if you haven't already!!)

cheers

[Jonathan Pickup]

i used to use sorensen 3 but i found that i needed to use H264 for podcasts

[P Retondo]

Nicholas and Jonathan, thanks, I'll try all those suggestions!

[islandmon]

Pete, keep in mind that QT uses Key Frames...which should have the hi-res you seek.

But, FPS uses various low-res tricks to extrapolate between the hi-res Keys.

Therefore, a screen capture of the Key will be significantly different than one of the more numerous filler frames.

Experiment with FPS, KeyFrame, and over all size ...

[P Retondo]

Islandmon, thanks for the insight. I stepped through my movie, and I could clearly identify the key frames. Unfortunately, the frame shown above is one of them!

Maybe size is one of the factors affecting my situation. I zoomed out to reduce the overall size of the view, because I find that it creates the animations faster with smaller file size. I would have been willing to accept the on-screen resolution I was seeing from the rendered view, but it seems my expectations were a little high. I'll try to keep the factors you point out in mind as I do some more experimentation.

[AZ MediaOne Design]

I use a screen capture program on the PC called "Instant Demo" to record real time walk through & fly over in open GL mode.= with a voice over description.

Then I save it to a flash animation file, like 10 times smaller than QuickTime. Good for tutorials too.

http://www.instant-demo.com/download.htm