Command line rendering

anigreator · Post by **anigreator** » Wed May 04, 2005 12:53 pm

Does it support AVI as an output format? If not, why not? Arrrgh! Looks like I'll have to do all of my rendering in the GUI. Blast!

JCook · Post by **JCook** » Wed May 04, 2005 1:50 pm

AVI is an old and obsolete format. Quicktime is a better format, and makes a smaller file. But the best way to render is to render to image files, such as JPEG or PNG, and then put the sequence together in an editing program like Quicktime or Cleaner. You can then export to AVI if it's what you really need. Quicktime is free for Mac or PC, and Quicktime Pro is only $30 -- and it's well worth it.

Jack

anigreator · Post by **anigreator** » Wed May 04, 2005 2:37 pm

JCook wrote:AVI is an old and obsolete format. Quicktime is a better format, and makes a smaller file.

This is simply not the case. AVI is a old (i.e. well established) file standard for storing video and audio. The video however, can be stored in many different formats (codecs) within the AVI file, from uncompressed to highly-compressed DivX (for example).

The biggest advantage of AVI (for me) is the ability to easily manipulate technical aspects of the video such as colour space, chroma interpolation, interlace settings and the like, outside of any video editing apps, and to do so programatically. In other words, it is not worth my moving over to a non-native video standard at any time soon, only to enjoy less funtionality than I have now.

JCook wrote:But the best way to render is to render to image files, such as JPEG or PNG, and then put the sequence together in an editing program like Quicktime or Cleaner. You can then export to AVI if it's what you really need.

Which is exactly what happens when you export an uncompressed AVI. Well, almost. The uncompressed AVI is just that... uncompressed, i.e. a sequence of BMP images. If I were to compress to PNG or JPG at any point in the production cycle, my animation would fail the quality tests at the broadcaster, and I would have to start the whole compositing/editing process again. Not to mention that I'm dealing with 19,500 frames, all of which require sync-sound!

JCook wrote:Quicktime is free for Mac or PC, and Quicktime Pro is only $30 -- and it's well worth it.

Jack

Not really. This sounds like a 'Macs are better than PCs' argument. AVI is free and requires no additional programmes or codecs to run on (my) PCs.

Thanks for teaching grandmother how to suck eggs.

RASH · Post by **RASH** » Wed May 04, 2005 6:16 pm

anigreator wrote:This sounds like a 'Macs are better than PCs' argument.

Please, be more precise. Last time I looked in a dictionary, "PC" meant "Personal Computer". Did you actually mean 'MacOSX is better than WinXP' argument, or 'PowerPC is better than Pentium' argument?

JCook wrote:AVI is an old and obsolete format.

If that is so, why do so many modern programs still support it? Are they sticking to traditions, or what?

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Wed May 04, 2005 6:46 pm

RASH: Good call, he meant to write Windows but he wrote PC (yes I can read minds), but it's a common error, let's not drag that slip of the keyboard any further ok...

Jack: I'm sorry, but if you don't know what you're talking about don't write it like it is fact. Write "I don't like avi" or "I THINK avi sux" if you wish but to say it's an old and obsolete format...now that could be the most misinformed and biased comment I've ever read on this forum.

And if I'm not mistaken there is still no actual answer to the question. Sorry Anigreator, I don't know either. I do know Moho relies heavily on Quicktime but Lost Marble will know the definitive answer.

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

mason · Post by **mason** » Wed May 04, 2005 7:31 pm

The answer is no. However, you can choose different codecs for the mov output.

anigreator · Post by **anigreator** » Wed May 04, 2005 7:42 pm

As it happens, I meant to write 'Macs are better than PCs', because that is what people actually say.

(An aurgument that has no basis in fact or common sense either way round)

anigreator · Post by **anigreator** » Wed May 04, 2005 7:45 pm

mason wrote:The answer is no. However, you can choose different codecs for the mov output.

Or not use the command line renderer

Toontoonz · Post by **Toontoonz** » Wed May 04, 2005 8:44 pm

http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/features/whatsnew.shtml

"improved AVI import and export (Windows)"

------------
Moho tutorial:

Section titled "Export Formats > Movies"

"AVI (Windows only): On Windows you can also export movies in AVI format."

mason · Post by **mason** » Wed May 04, 2005 10:45 pm

Sorry about that. I'm OSX at work and Linux at home.

JCook · Post by **JCook** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:39 pm

OK. I stand corrected about the obsolescence of the AVI format. I've always found Quicktime files to be smaller and usually of higher quality than the files I've seen in AVI. However the DivX compressor is quite good for AVI. I make animations for both Mac and Windows users (for scientific presentations), and the Windows users usually want Windows Media files, which are of pretty high quality.

I always render final animations as image sequences, JPEG, PNG or TIFF. I do this to avoid problems in the event of a power outage, and also in case I need to re-render just a segment of a scene. This is pretty standard procedure among 3D animators. I composite the sequences in Cleaner, and compress to the final movie. I've had some of these animations broadcast on television, and have never had a problem. I give the TV people an uncompressed Quicktime movie.

I want it to be recorded that I never once said that Macs were better than Windows machines. I use both at work, and deal with both with my clients. If there is going to be a platform war, I did not start it.

Jack

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:56 pm

After thinking about this thread for a bit, I ran a single animation through just about every codec in quicktime. And not a one of them came up with a file size that would indicate that it was uncompressed. Not even choosing "none". The quick bit of research I did leads me to believe there are no thoroughly uncompressed formats in quicktime. I know there are supposedly lossless settings, but I also prefer to output my work into (admittedly huge) raw uncompressed AVI's. Is there a way to output to QT that involves no compression whatsoever?

mason · Post by **mason** » Thu May 05, 2005 2:20 pm

If you're on a mac and use the quicktime format, there's an Apple Uncompressed codec. That really is uncompressed. In commercial animations you would render to frames in a lossless format and bring it into a compositing program (this has been mentioned many times on the forum). Outputting to a compressed format is bad form for a large project as there is no way to get the quality back.

On Windows, use Avidub; Linux, use avidemux. I believe there's a way to synch sound in them, but I would use a nonlinear video editor. Shake or After Effects if your rich or a thief; Cinelerra or Kino if you love open source; Main Actor for cheaper proprietary editing.

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Thu May 05, 2005 4:43 pm

"Main Actor for cheaper proprietary editing"

Or Pure Motion Edit Studio 5, look in "other software" for a link.

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

Post by **Lost Marble** » Fri May 06, 2005 6:13 pm

There's compression, and then there's compression. Not all compression degrades the quality of your images. PNG, for example, is a form of "lossless" compression, meaning that no data is thrown away during the process. The pixels in a PNG image are exactly the same as before you saved the image, they're just stored more efficiently. JPEG, on the other hand, is a "lossy" compression format. Some data is in fact thrown away during the process, resulting in quality degradation, especially if you re-save in JPEG format over and over again.

Just because a format is compressed, does not mean that quality will be affected.

Back to the original question: AVI is not an option in command-line mode, because the way Moho exports AVI files requires the GUI compression options dialog to come up, which just wouldn't work from the command line. We may be able to work around this in the future, but right now they just aren't compatible.