Lost in a sea of codecs...

[Walczak Photo]

Hey All,
I'm very new to these forums and to video in general. As such if I've posted this in the wrong place, please let me know where it needs to go and I'll repost. Also please know that I -have- done a search for this but haven't really found what I was looking for (at least not at first glance).

In a very small nutshell, I'm a college student perusing a degree in graphic arts and I'm in the process of doing a short video for my art history class (don't think about that too long...it'll give you a headache). The video itself is basically a 6 1/2 minute short on Leonardo Da Vinci and includes not only several stills of his paintings (which "fly" or zoom in/out) but a couple of animations of Da Vinci's inventions that I've created in Autodesk's Maya (as well as an intro, credits, etc). Basically I've done the animations in Maya, edited/compiled them in Adobe After Effects (added a few extra things like backgrounds, "fly to inset", etc) and I've assembled the whole production in Adobe Premiere CS3. The video itself is basically setup to 640 x 480 which with the test render's so far seems pretty decent (the vid projector isn't the hottest so higher rez probably won't matter too much). My (eventual) goal is to cut this all to either an AVI or a Quicktime file for playback on the classroom's PC (which I don't know the stats on) to be projected on a big screen with an Epson digital projector (sorry...no idea which model but I can find out if it's essential). I also may put this on a DVD later for my family but I'll deal with that later.

So far everything looks pretty good but I'm pretty lost in the sea of various compression codecs and output options. Up until now, my test renders have been made using Microsoft DV AVI set to D1/DV NTSC...and it's pretty good but I seem to be getting better quality (not to mention smaller file sizes) with Quicktime, using the Sorenson 3. In fact the only real problem with the Sorenson is that I'm getting some stutter during playback...and it seems to be Sorenson 3 "SE" so I can't really seem to adjust anything either. Either way, I'm wondering if there's a better option to produce really good, high quality video...?

Now these animations are my babies...I've spent a couple of months working on them. I've also been told that the head of the school's art department is coming in to see my little vid as well (apparently my instructor has been most impressed with my work so far). As such, I'd like to render out at the -best- quality video I can (at least short of going completely uncompressed which Windows Media Player doesn't seem to care for anyways). In other words, I'm not looking to do some dumb little flv video for Youtube or anything. The problem is that beyond a stupid slideshow of my photography and a dumb little vid I did of my handicapped dog, I really have no video experience at all...at least when it comes to all of this compression and output stuff. I've been playing around a bit...trial and error basically, but there are sooooo many options with even more options for each option.

Sooo...I would be most grateful for any suggestions or advice as to what would be the best way to proceed when it comes time to render the final project for my class. I really don't want to get too bogged down with a learning curve here as I am already a full time student (and Maya has a MASSIVE learning curve as is) and this little video of mine is likely going to be a one time deal...just looking for some straight forward advice as to how to output some good, high quality footage for the final stage of my production.

Hopefully that should be enough info for folks here but if you need more details, please lemme know and I'll get them up here. I thank you in advance for your time and efforts...I'm grateful!
Jim

[Cornucopia]

Don't use Sorenson for this project. It's a destination-only codec, and an older one, to boot. Been superceded by others.

The rule of thumb is:
Always keep your quality AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE for AS LONG AS POSSIBLE (Also, note: better to start with HD rez). Then, match your final destination codec (and rez) to the abilities of the type of destination media.

Very Best would be:
Create, saving as Uncompressed.
Composite (uncompressed settings), saving as Uncompressed.
Edit on uncompressed timeline, saving as Uncompressed.
Then, do an export at the capabilities of the Player+Display's hardware+software limitations.

The above uses up a LOT of hard drive space and taxes the disc access (being uncompressed).

A decent compromise would be:
Create, Composite & Edit strictly DV (whether PC=DV-AVI, or Mac=DV-MOV). Then export.

I don't know your specs, so can't guess at what would be the best export destination format. Sounds like you have some difficulty with stuttering, which could be HD access bottleneck, or underpowered CPU (with no GPU rendering). Try "DVD-quality" WMV9 as a start.

Or, if you're on a Mac, export to MP4. h.264 would look better for a given filesize, but might be too taxing for your CPU.

If you're going to put this on a DVD, then that destination export format would be higher bitrate (~8.5Mbps) MPEG2. (All the preceding steps ought to be the same)

Scott

P.S. If you're thinking about uncompressed, don't worry about using it with WMP, as you won't be using Uncomp. as the Destination codec. Like EVER.

[edDV]

...I've assembled the whole production in Adobe Premiere CS3. The video itself is basically setup to 640 x 480 which with the test render's so far seems pretty decent (the vid projector isn't the hottest so higher rez probably won't matter too much). My (eventual) goal is to cut this all to either an AVI or a Quicktime file for playback on the classroom's PC (which I don't know the stats on) to be projected on a big screen with an Epson digital projector (sorry...no idea which model but I can find out if it's essential). I also may put this on a DVD later for my family but I'll deal with that later....

I agree DV (4:3) format for project edit master. Uncompressed is an option but will push the disc system possibly causing lost frames on playback.

Then for distribution, export DVD MPeg2 (4:3, 720x480, lower field first, ~9200 Kbps CBR, 224 Kbps AC3 or mp2 audio). That should play on any current PC or Mac.

[Walczak Photo]

Okies guys...thanks for the advice. I'm not worried about my system...it's an Intel Quad Q6600 and it handles processing and rendering just fine. The playback system in the classroom as I found out today is a Dell Duo Core with 2 gigs of Ram...it -should- handle video but I know it's the system itself that's causing the stuttering as it's done it with DVD's in class too (commercial DVDs...not my stuff). I suspect the problem is the NVIDIA video card...as both a computer graphics artist and as a former computer tech, I've never had anything but problems with NVIDIA vid cards...their motherboard chipsets seem to work fine but their vid cards have always been just terrible.

Now I will say that I did run a couple of test renders last night with the h.264 vs the Sorenson and I have to say the Sorenson looked better...-A LOT- better....really HUGE difference in fact. Now I haven't gone in and started trying to tweak the 264 settings or anything (yet) but I was rather surprised because I do know the Sorenson 3 is an older codec. That said, of my numerous test renders, this one with the Sorenson 3 has BY FAR produced the best results so far...really stunning. Actually my only nit about the Sorenson really is that I seem to be using the "SE" version and all of the options are locked out...I may have to dig around and see if I can find an unlocked version or something there. BTW...the stuttering that I thought was coming from the Sorenson wasn't...it's in the uncompressed Maya/After Effects animation footage...gonna have to re-render that (I suspect the problem there was simply my lack of familiarity with Adobe After Effects).

On that same note, I'm not doing this in HD either...no real reason to at all. From these Epson projectors, I doubt ANYONE would really see any difference in quality as far as that goes.

Basically the work flow goes as such; I'm doing the Maya animations as uncompressed tiff's (rendered at 1200 x 900), which I then bring in to After Effects, add a couple of things (such as backgrounds and such as I mentioned before) and then I save those clips as uncompressed AVI's at the DV 4:3 which I then bring in to Premiere. I'm also using Progressive scan as that's produced much superior results than the deinterlacing has. Now I have tried to save the whole production as an Uncompressed AVI from Premiere (CS3 if it matters) but for some reason I'm having vid problems there...the uncompressed AVI's will not play back the video. If I take them in to Virtual Dub and re-save them, they're fine...Virtual Dub will read them but not something like Windows Media Player (Media Player Classic to be exact). At this point there are no plans for "distribution". Once I present the project in class in a month or so, I'll probably burn a DVD for the teacher, one for my Dad and one for myself and that's about the extent of the distribution....as I said, it's just a little vid project for my art history class.

Anyways, thanks again for everyone's advice. For now at least, I'll probably stick with this Sorenson anyways because again it's really producing some outstanding results despite being older. I'm not crazy about Quicktime video but for the great results I'm getting, I can deal with it.

Thanks again,
Jim