A Question About Connecting Scenes

[GopherCureSelf]

My first question, but in many parts

I am now using the Anime Pro Demo, and have about 25 days left. I know I cannot export anything, but looking to future issues, I am wondering how I will connect multiple scenes/exports. This program seems like it will be awesome for one scene and short animations, but I would like to do something a bit longer, and with many scenes.

I hope I'm using the term 'scene' correctly. I'm not familiar with animation nomenclature. The term 'shot' might apply for some things I have in mind. I can understand New Scene = New Project.

I would really prefer to stay away from Flash (it's expensive and I kinda sorta' hate it). I've seen a myriad of other tools that seem suffice. After Effects is about as expensive. It seems I could, in theory, export each scene as Quicktime, then connect them in iMovie (and add my own MP3 soundtrack as well ). I would like to keep them SWF since that's more bandwidth friendly. I guess I'm just wondering what anyone else has tried and what they know.

[heyvern]

You could use AS to import rendered scenes or shots or whatever (I forget the terminology as well), and stitch them together. However there aren't as many dedicated features for that and an external editor would probably render faster and have more output options. You could check around for some free open source editors. If you are on Windows there are a lot of free products out there. If you use Mac iMovie would work great for this.

If you want SWF for the final project unfotunately you will still need to shell out the big bucks for Flash. There really isn't any good way to use Anime Studio by itself to produce long SWF projects. There is no way to stitch short scenes together, you can't put in any action script for "preloading". Plus unless everything is perfectly optimized it would run like molasses in January (during a time without global warming, it's freaking 50 degrees in Feb here!).

AS is more of a product to use WITH Flash, not a replacement. It's SWF export is "limited". It will export but the file size is only optimized for size under certain conditions:

http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/manual/i ... htips.html

-vern

[fiziwig]

I'm also a newbie. What I've done so far with my 3-minute animation is to render each shot (10 to 20 seconds each) as a separate project. Then I use QuickTime Pro to stitch them together and add the soundtrack, which is a separate mp3 file.

So far this approach has worked just great for me. Then, still in QuickTime Pro I export the whole movie as mp4 to upload to YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBndWASgxsA

--gary

[heyvern]

QT pro! Great idea. Only what? $40? Or is it $20?

And MUCH MUCH faster than rendering out those clips from AS. Copy and paste a bunch of QT into QT pro and export to a new movie file. ZIIINNGG! Fast. Do the same with AS and you can go have a coffee, watch a movie... feed the dog... write an opera... (I'm exaggerating of course. I don't like opera.)

I've done this myself when I was too lazy to fire up iMovie or AE. It's so fast and easy for quick stitching of clips and QT can import image sequences really well.

I do that too. I export to image sequences out of AS open in QT and copy/paste the sound file into it. Image sequences are a great feature in ASPro. You don't have to rerender an entire scene or shot if only one small piece needs to be changed.



-vern

[madis]

I would like to keep them SWF since that's more bandwidth friendly.

Flash is ideal for interactive websites, but it can't compete with fully rendered animation. It renders graphics in real-time and when your animation gets more complex, the result can be ugly on some slower computers (besides AS isn't very good at exporting swf).

Export it, edit with whatever you like and upload to youtube for viewing if you want to keep it web friendly. That's what most of the users do here

[GopherCureSelf]

I thank you all for your replies. There's a lot of talent and knowledge here.

heyvern:

That sucks the cool 2 1/2D effects wouldn't transfer. That's one of my favorite features What I'm seeing here and on YouTube, this program should be more than enough in terms animation.
Hmmm... *thinks to self* After reading madis' reply, is there any reason I would need a 15 minute SWF?

I have a Mac and a PC. I'm trying both demos on both my machines. So long as I can kick out decent quality video that another program can do something with. Where there's free time, there's a way...

(and it was freakin' 62 and sunny here today)

fiziwig:
QT Pro let's you hash all the exported movies into one?

Also: I've read some of your posts here and read your tutorials. You've come a long way in a short time. Makes me wonder what my problem is lol

madis:

Flash is ideal for interactive websites, but it can't compete with fully rendered animation.

I could not be bothered to create a fancy Flash webpage. HTML/PHP/whatever works fine and is less annoying when you click the back button and accidentally leave a site lol

I hate to ask something silly (again), but could you define 'fully rendered?'

[heyvern]

I hate to ask something silly (again), but could you define 'fully rendered?'

Flash is "real time" and it is vector based. There are no "rendered pixels". Rendering to a raster format can give a better result. You have more options with effects.

As far as bandwidth issues... I have to agree that Flash might be "fast" in some ways it can still be "slower" than a raster movie file. All movie files are the "same", compressed images displayed at a consistent frame rate. Flash on the other hand can slow way down if there is too much action on the screen. That isn't as much of a problem with raster format. And you never have to worry about sound going out of sync.

-vern

[slowtiger]

Flash became popular at a time when bandwidth was much more expensive than today, and at that time it was the only way to create reasonable big movements on screen. This has changed.

A Flash video or an MP4 video or an DivX video is quite small when compressed cleverly, without losing too much quality. Right now it's a safe bet to create video for web in dimensions like 320 x 240 and get a smaller file than doing the same in an SWF ... unless it is really just a stick figure on plain colour in it. Plus you don't have to worry about sound sync issues which you still have in Flash.

[Mikdog]

I render the scenes out separately then use iMovie to stick 'em together.

[GopherCureSelf]

heyvern:
I knew that vector graphics worked on geometric points, and even had a 'fake' z axis, but I did not know it was a real time rendering. I thought the outputted SWF was already rendered. Now that I think of it, yes - I have seen Flash stuff slow a bit, which I thought was odd since the movie had been fully loaded. I just learned something lol

slowtiger:
Ah, so given I have the proper codecs, I'd be better off using 'real' video than the Flash format anyway. I'm glad for that info.

mikdog:
That's kinda what I was to do for sake of YouTubing my outputted movies. It is turning out that I may not need that Flash format per-say anyway.


Thanks again everyone.
I think this program will more than a fitting substitute for Flash