Autodesk Codec Response!!!

[Specialagentjim]

Okay, the response is back!

Although, its a little strangly worded..at least to me... They say "The rules also allow for QuickTime..." Did I miss something..?
Then some other parts (for anyone thats been following my rendering posts...) sound a little familiar..does it not..? lol

Oh well, in any event, this is their reccomendation. Personally, Im probobly going to go with quicktime. Its a much higher quality style, and I like how it usually dosent start skipping around towards the end of a file...

Here's the official E-mail:

Subj: RE: Codec Issue
Date: 1/30/2003 4:56:34 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: first.entries@autodesk.com
To: Specialagentjim@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)




Dear Jimmy:

We prefer Cinepak, Intel Indeo, or QuickTime.

Cinepak has been a very popular choice, and has had good results in most situations. (Codecs have strengths in different situations.) This is a good recommendation.

Intel Indeo is another one supplied by Windows, but is not as popular. People can use it if they like.

The rules also allow for QuickTime. This is another widespread and popular codec, and in fact it is included on the 3ds max CD.

The main issue is if the 900 frame animation be compressed to fit on the CD and not lose quality. Without compression, the animation might need 1 and 1/2 CD's!

With the codec's compression quality slider (0 - 100%), you can squeeze it down so it's nice and small, but a rather poor image. You need to keep it high enough (say, 65%) to get it to look good and small enough to fit on the CD. (This quality slider choice displays as part of the Render options within 3ds max.)

Test! Test!

One tip:

1.Create the original animation and render it out as a series of sequentially number 640x480 Targa files (e.g. Targ0000,tga, Targ0001.tga, Targ0002.tga....Targ0899.tga).

If necessary, use the Network Rendering feature to help shorten the rendering time. This is covered in the 3ds max Reference Manual, and essentially consists of installing 3ds max on several other computers that have a network connection to the master. These other computers can be accessed by the master copy of 3ds max and harnessed to help with the rendering. Even without getting licensed!

2.Then clear the scene from 3ds max, and select the Targa file sequence as a background image environment. The steps are covered in the Ref Manual about how to choose an environment background from a bitmap. The sequence of files is something that 3ds max calls an Image File List (IFL) file, and that's pretty easy too, once you've done it. The environment Browse window has a checkmark for an option called Sequence. So you choose Targ0000.tga, check the Sequence option, and 3ds max automatically assumes you wish Targ0000.tga and all the other Targ*.tga files after that.

3. The last step is to render the Animation file. This can be a test of, say 50 - 100 frames, to see how the compression settings are going to work out. Testing this way is quicker than rendering the geometry each time for each test. This method only needs 3ds max to convert previously rendered images to an animation file since there's no geometry in this cleared-off scene.


If you have any other qustions, please visit the discussion forum on www.discreet.com.

Thank you,
The Autodesk- FIRST Robotics Team





-----Original Message-----
From: Specialagentjim@aol.com [mailto:Specialagentjim@aol.com]
Sent: January 29, 2003 6:57 AM
To: First Robotics Competition
Subject: Codec Issue


I've been speaking with the Animation community on Chiefdelphi.com and I've noticed that we're lacking an official ruling on compression/codec usage. We've all been hoping to use something a little more High-res then the previous year's cinepak encoding, but are afriad of a DQ simply based on lack of a proper codec. If you could make an offical ruling and include it with a team update, it would be most appreciated. Thanks!

Jimmy Martz, Team 108: Animation Division

So yeah.....I end this post with a poll, which codec will your team be going with?

[Trashed20]

not too surprizing. quick time it is

[Jeremy_Mc]

my team last year didn't use compression...our video was about 730 megs :x

it was crazy...we didn't see the team update about codecs (we were just partnered with a school, so many times we missed team updates) so we didn't know we could use cinepak

we'll more than likely opt for QT

*jeremy

[Kyle Fenton]

What do they mean Quicktime?

Quicktime is a player, it isn't a codec. I really don't understand what they mean by Quicktime. Some people here still thinks a .mov file isn't playable on Windows Media Player, it is!!!! a .mov file is just special wrapping code of a video codec and an audio codec. Its the video and audio codec that you computer decodes in special way.


They should specify a codec for Quicktime.
Intel Indeo & Cinepak are codecs for quicktime, and WMP for that matter too.

Personally a MPEG-4 Codec, like

http://www.3ivx.com
or
Apple's Built in MPEG-4 Codec will do nicely, and should be compliant and give it enough resolution to transfer it to MPEG-2 for when they play it on a DVD

[Jeremy_Mc]

uh actually quicktime is a codec...

maybe you should wander over to apple and take a look at what quicktime exactly is...

*jeremy

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally posted by Jeremy_Mc
uh actually quicktime is a codec...

maybe you should wander over to apple and take a look at what quicktime exactly is...

*jeremy

No, Quicktime is a player. I know my apple products, and I worked with Quicktime for many years. I have created Movies, QTVR's, and bunch of other stuff.

When you select the .mov Quicktime format, you select the video and Audio Coedec, as shown bellow

[Specialagentjim]

Well, I think that they're really adament about us using 3ds max for everything, all the way though post (even though most of us [including me] won't). Therfore, I think they're looking for something along the lines of this, as seen in the image below. I'm guessing what they're looking for in the QT format is that it's a default QT codec, that comes default with 3ds max. So if its compatible with QT by default, Im interpreting that as good to go with. That's what I'm going to do at least...


This is straight outta the .mov settings in 3ds max

[reisser]

Quicktime is not a codec. When I export a sequence in Adobe Premiere as Quicktime I am able to choose both audio and video codecs for the .mov file format. Selecting the "video" (what is this anyway?) option seems to work best as it is about 2.5mb for 2 seconds of video with no sound. The compression appears nearly lossless and is set to 100% with this file size. I found that the processor utilization is very low on this type of compression, ensuring smooth playback. Is there an actual Quicktime compression... a proprietary codec? I am definitely disappointed with Cinepak. It pixelated out animation last year even though it was set to 100% quality. Don't use Cinepak... Any help is apprecaited.
-Brandon

[Jay5780]

I'm a professional graphic designer and animator and I have to say Kyle is right.

Open any animation of editing software and look at your output module settings.

Using adobe After Effects as an example; first choose your output format (ie. QUICKTIME, pict sequence, jpeg sequence, PhotoShop sequence, mp3, Animated GIF etc...) Then you choose video output format option (ie CODEC or Compressor Decompressor) here you can choose from any CODEC you have on your machine (ie. Animation, Cinepak, Avid Meridian, Targa Cine YUV, Graphics, Motion JPEG A or B etc...) You just need to know whatever CODEC you use is on the machine that the movie will be played on, so use one that comes with QuickTime basic. So if I render something with Targa Cine YUV and sent it to you you won't ne able to play it unless you download the CODEC from pinnacle or you have a Cinewave board.

Questions, Comments, Concerns???

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally posted by reisser
Quicktime is not a codec. When I export a sequence in Adobe Premiere as Quicktime I am able to choose both audio and video codecs for the .mov file format. Selecting the "video" (what is this anyway?) option seems to work best as it is about 2.5mb for 2 seconds of video with no sound. The compression appears nearly lossless and is set to 100% with this file size. I found that the processor utilization is very low on this type of compression, ensuring smooth playback. Is there an actual Quicktime compression... a proprietary codec? I am definitely disappointed with Cinepak. It pixelated out animation last year even though it was set to 100% quality. Don't use Cinepak... Any help is apprecaited.
-Brandon

No, there is no Quicktime Codec, there are a bunch of codec that can be selected with Quicktime. The codec he has got up there is the Sorenson 3 Codec, which is a good codec, and has lower CPU decompression cycles, but not as standard compliant as MPEG-4 is.

[Specialagentjim]

Originally posted by Kyle Fenton
No, there is no Quicktime Codec, there are a bunch of codec that can be selected with Quicktime. The codec he has got up there is the Sorenson 3 Codec, which is a good codec, and has lower CPU decompression cycles, but not as standard compliant as MPEG-4 is.

Oh sorry, didn't mean to select that one, Juss was showing the list of choices. Yeah, MPEG-4 is a much better one to use for compatibility.

Remember, the last thing you want is a DQ because they can't see your animation. The second last thing you want is a pixelated piece of....yeah... as your animaiton, espeically if your going for technical award.

[reisser]

Ok I just spent the time to do an image quality vs. compression test with all of quicktime's supported codecs and DivX. I think we all know the benefits of DivX well so I will leave that out of here. The codec that had the least artifacts, ailiasing, and other unwanted stuff while still having a very manageable file size was, in fact, the video codec. I urge you to try this experiment yourself. You should be pleasantly surprised by its performance. As for audio, I would like to hear some of your expert suggestions on that. Usually I would do PCM due to lack of expertise.
-Brandon

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally posted by reisser
Ok I just spent the time to do an image quality vs. compression test with all of quicktime's supported codecs and DivX. I think we all know the benefits of DivX well so I will leave that out of here. The codec that had the least artifacts, ailiasing, and other unwanted stuff while still having a very manageable file size was, in fact, the video codec. I urge you to try this experiment yourself. You should be pleasantly surprised by its performance. As for audio, I would like to hear some of your expert suggestions on that. Usually I would do PCM due to lack of expertise.
-Brandon

The Video Codec is a very old codec, it was primarily used 5 to 8 years ago. Its kind of obsolete. The best Image Quality to kilobytes/sec ratio is either MPEG-4 or Sorenson 3.


If you see the picture I recently posted up on top, If you click settings, you get another window giving you a bunch of options like quality, fps, etc. If you put those to Max qualities, you will see a much better picture, and also a higher bit rate.

DIVX is ok, not great though. It is a variant of the MPEG-4 Standard that does not comply with the ISMA (Internet Streaming Media Alliance) standard. The only reason DIVX took off, is because of its the #1 format for P2P networks for downloading DVD's.

[Specialagentjim]

I've seen divx take off for more reason's than juss its the best for DVD ripping. Divx, as far as was explained to me, calculates only changes from scene to scene. So if something doesnt move at all, its not in the movie code...thus resulting in a very tiny file..we had a 15 second video of a robot once, that beacuse only part of it moved, it was like 80k or something, raytraced materials with a full range of colors and all. Its small, its a fairly fast encoding, and you can use windows media player (which I prefer to quicktime just about anyday, just because it's my jukebox). I use divx for most of my encoding here simply because its convient.

Oh, and here's an idea: let's juss all go Animated GIFs....lol

QT with a standard MPEG-4 Encoding should be good enough for this...won't it?

[Jeremy_Mc]

It might help if i'd click "Advanced" once in a while huh?

Sorry about that. I don't do a whole lot with video, but I assumed since there was a streaming server for it, it was a codec.

*jeremy