What should I export to?

PhantomIre · Post by **PhantomIre** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 7:41 pm

What should I export to to get the best of sound and a small file size?

myles · Post by **myles** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 12:06 am

Without more information, your question is meaningless.
How long is a piece of string?

As someone with a multimedia background, you probably realise most of the following, but I'll post it anyway for other readers:

The size of a rendered AVI will depend on how many seconds of animation you are rendering, the frame rate, the output width and height - often misleadingly called resolution (for example, you'd probably use different "resolutions" if you were outputting for web than if you were outputting for broadcast, or DVD creation, or telephones, or CD multimedia), the amount of detail present in your animation and what codec (compression/decompression) scheme you are using.
Which codec you use will depend on what you are going to do with the output - you would probably use different codecs depending if your output was going to the web, broadcast, a video editor, DVD, telephone, iPod, or CD multimedia).

All these factors play a roles in the final size of your output.

For example:
If I'm rendering a short piece of uncompressed animation that will go into a video editor, eventually targeted to a DVD, I'm not at all dismayed by file sizes in the tens of megabytes.
However, if I'm looking at outputting that same bit of animation to the web, I'll try my best to get it down to a couple of megabytes at the most, and preferably under a megabyte.

Most of the time I'd consider AVI or Quicktime MOV as the output format.

When outputting to the web, SWF becomes another possibility but (because of the limitations of SWF) only if the output matches certain criteria (see the Moho manual for more details).

Regards, Myles.

PhantomIre · Post by **PhantomIre** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 6:48 am

thanks, myles. Yeah, the thing is I usually DO export to .avi BUT my file is always in the HUNDREDS of megabytes - and this is for a minute animation. Is this not right? Should a minute's worth of animation be less than 300 something megabytes? I've tried cutting down to 30 seconds, but still... i get a whopper of a file. Would cutting down on brush and color effects (as well as layers, etc) help to decrease the file size of the finished product? Help me out, I'm losing hope with moho.

myles · Post by **myles** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:06 am

PhantomIre wrote:the thing is I usually DO export to .avi

Without understanding the rest of the process, just choosing .avi is not going to be much help.

PhantomIre wrote:Help me out, I'm losing hope with moho.

It's got nothing to do with Moho.

Given a specific width and height, a specific frame rate, a specific codec, and a specific amount of pixel variation / compression algorithm interaction, the file will be the same size whether it was created in Moho, some other software, from a digital video camera, analogue capture card, or a series of scanned bitmaps joined together.

The factor that usually plays the biggest part (apart from width/height - in Moho, project settings) is codec (in Moho, selected during export).
If you're going to work in digital video, you must get to know codec concepts and implications.

Full Frames (Uncompressed), the default compression setting for AVI files in Moho, usually produces huge files.

It's the default setting in Moho because it makes no assumptions about what codecs you have installed, so it should work no matter what you've done to your system, even if you've been perverse enough to delete all your existing codecs.

Broadcast professionals will know if uncompressed video is appropriate for their post-production process.
Everyone else should use some sort of compressing codec.

For example, let's say you used the Moho defaults: 320x240, uncompressed, 60 seconds, at default 24 fps.

That's 320 width x 240 height x 4 bytes per pixel (assuming RGBA) x 60 frames x 24 frames per second. Roughly 400 megabytes.

So it sounds suspiciously like you've used the default settings. Bad idea - no biscuit for you.

Firstly, define your output purpose:

Are you going to put this file into a video editor and do lots of further processing?
It will depend on what quality degradation you can get away with.
If you want the highest quality, a lossless codec may be best. If you're going to use the alpha channel information Moho puts out for compositing, a lossless AVI codec that supports RGBA is a good idea, such as HuffYUV or Lagarith. If you've rendered the background with the animation, alpha support isn't so important, and you can choose some other lossless codec.
You should be able to get file sizes a quarter the size of uncompressed video, if not less.

Is it to go straight to the web?
A good lossy compression is a good idea. If you were outputting to Quicktime, something like Sorenson 3. For AVIs, maybe some MPEG4-based codec (XviD, DivX, maybe Microsoft MPEG-4), or something like Indeo or On2 VP7.
Your 300 MB uncompressed file will probably end up something like several megabytes, or even less.

Are you writing it to DVD to play on a standalone DVD player?
Are you happy with the more restricted compatibility of DivX or are you going to standard MPEG-2?

If you just use the defaults, yes you will get huge files from Moho. Without a basic understanding of codecs, you will have trouble no matter what software or hardware you use.

Some reading for you:

http://www.siggraph.org/education/mater ... efault.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codec
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless

Regards, Myles.

PhantomIre · Post by **PhantomIre** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:55 am

thanks myles. I'll read up on codecs. One last thing, you seem like a seasoned techy. Have you finished anything on moho? If you have a website or links to any of your stuff (non-commercial that is) please send em to me. I've seen a few moho-user productions, but none are all that amusing (in my opinion). I'm still skeptic as to what moho's really capable of.

myles · Post by **myles** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 1:19 am

PhantomIre wrote:One last thing, you seem like a seasoned techy.

PC tech yes, animation no - I'm only a hobbyist animator and still learning.

PhantomIre wrote:Have you finished anything on moho?

A couple of things posted to the Share Your Work forum some time back, and one entry in the Animation Contest forum - all very amateurish.
A couple of other things, but not online. Working on some new stuff in my very limited spare time.

PhantomIre wrote:I'm still skeptic as to what moho's really capable of.

I'm a fan of the types of the "almost cut-out" stylised animation technique (Note: none of the cartoons below are created with Moho, but I believe Moho is quite sufficient for creating something similar) :
King Arthur's Disasters
The Big Knights - see also here and here
Aaagh! It's the Mr. Hell Show!
Angela Anaconda
Flatmania
Peppa Pig
Atomic Betty

Regards, Myles.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 1:46 am

As always, your replies are great, Myles

myles · Post by **myles** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 2:42 am

Thanks Rasheed!

I just wish I could say the same about my animation.

(I must do more animation, and less programming)

Regards, Myles.

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 7:19 pm

i think myles deserves some love.

Here's some love...

jorgy · Post by **jorgy** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:54 pm

I agree, Myles replies are always great. Some of the newbies' questions are kind of daunting, and Myles is always able to put himself in their shoes and figure out what is being asked like he's there in front of their screen. Way to go!

gavi dvan · Post by **gavi dvan** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:15 am

And he's always so polite, the way he rounds it up with the "Regards, Myles"! Respect.

Regards, Gavi.

Rai López · Post by **Rai López** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:52 am

...YEAH! Sometimes even he reminds me to LM himself!

tonym · Post by **tonym** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 6:55 pm

Great post, Myles.

Biscuit for you!

Another quick way to get a gigantic file shrunk down to a tiny file...
Save your animation as a MOV...
Open the MOV file in QuickTime 7.0...
Click Export under the File menu...
Choose one of the handy compression options: Dial-up, broadband, etc.

Ta-dah!

Tony M