Questions.....

[mad3d]

My team (449) and I had a few questions regarding the 2002 animation. The requirements say the animation must be turned in on a cd uncompressed in avi file format 640x480 (assuming 30 fps). However, if the math is done, it is found that even only 640x480 30fps x 30 sec of IMAGE only will take up 829488600 bytes, or more than 100 MB over a CD's capacity. And this is without sound, title screen, or credits. I believe the requirements need to be revised to allow certain compression algorithms to be used as well as allowing a team to turn in the animation on a DVD or in mpeg2 format. Finally, I think the 640x480 frame size should be changed to 720x480, the NTSC broadcasting standard.

[Zeinin]

Yeah, we really need this reply.

[Nate Smith]

Keep in mind that for an "official" answer, or any real attempt to get the criteria changed, you will need to go through FRCTech2002, or perhaps Autodesk directly(I think there's an e-mail address for them on FIRST's site, or maybe one of the updates.)

[Jay Lundy]

Quote from FRCtech2002:
Regarding the Autodesk Award for Visualization,
Autodesk has done some testing and found that
rendering 30 seconds of animation "uncompressed"
yields files larger than can be stored on a CDROM.

Because of this, we ask that submittors use the
Cinepak codec at 640 x 480 and 100% quality. This
setting will yield good results and provide a standard
of comparison for the teams.

We will add this to the next team update.

-M4

[Daishichimaru]

Well, everybody, let's look on the bright side. Cinepak is such a crap codec that you can leave out fine detail from your animation and it won't be noticed with the pixelation.

[Zeinin]

oh for gods sake


cinipak... welcome to bleedsville and pixle land... forget motion blur, we have built in the codec!


im gonna go shoot myself:mad:

[mad3d]

At least its better then only 15 sec of animation fitting.......

[Daishichimaru]

Well.. after trying it out on my XP box in the lab, Cine@100 isn't too bad... surprising, since I remember it being a lot worse at home. Was there a codec update in the last year or so for Cine?

[Zeinin]

radius is Out Of bidnezz, so we wont be seeing any updates for cinepak ever. hehe. they made the first video boards for the mac, i found that out today.