Codec

[Cipher X]

Originally posted by Don Knight
My concern is that "YOU" the students will be left in the dark as the compression requirements are so vague to be non-existent. And if "YOU" as a student submit a animation in a compression format that Autodesk can't decode, it doen't matter how many hours you worked on it or how good it is. IT WILL GET DUMPED!

And I don't want you all to be forced into using Cinepak, again like last year.
If you're involved with a animation group you will understand its shortcomings.

To Specialagentjim glad to see you posted the same information too

PS - I didn't know we had any teams in INDIA? [/b]

Yo sorry about that dude, i kinda just reacted to the first impression i had. yeah u are right i shoudl have actually searched a bit more. Lol no there are no teams from india atleast not to my knowledge. But i am from there and well i didnt want to give my team a bad name because of my stupidity. once i realized that autodesk might have send like 30 ppl that same email. sorry. my fault. will think next time before i post

Cipher

[Soukup]

what is the quick time codec? It says it's included on the cd...I know this my have been adressed in a different thread...but how do I export using a quicktime codec?

[SGK]

I did some checking on what Quicktime codec means.

Check out http://mornmist.2y.net/~blibbler/CODEC_discussion/.

Summarizing, the ones that I can see available in 3DSMAX are:

3ivx
Motion JPEG
On2 VP3
Open DivX
Sorenson

Some details copied from above web site:

Quicktime comes with three varieties of Motion JPEG:

Motion JPEG A; Motion JPEG B; and Photo JPEG.
When JPEG was first released, different groups were impressed with the compression ratio that it gave, and decided that it would be useful to use it as the basis for a small, relatively lossless hardware video codec. They added interlacing support to it (Interlacing is a video, not an image concept) and released. Different groups released different implementations of it, but they were essentially the same. To support both implementations, Quicktime needs to have separate codecs to deal with each one. Thus: MJPEG A and MJPEG B.

Photo JPEG is a different beast. While MJPEG A & B were based off of hardware implementations of JPEG, Photo JPEG exists due to the magic of Quicktime. It works similar to the other image based codecs, such as TIFF, BMP, and PNG. Basically, it uses Quicktime to display a series of JPEG images in quick succession. Because it is just a series of quicktime images stored, and played in quick succession, it does not support the video concept of interlacing.

Encoding:
All of the Motion JPEGs (including Photo JPEG) are very fast at encoding. In my very informal tests, I found that they are some of the fastest encoders available for quicktime.

Since all of these codecs use the quicktime JPEG component to create JPEG images, they should all be roughly the same size, and the same speed.

Decoding:
Comprehensiveness of settings:
MJPEG A & B both have support for interlacing.

Current Version:
Unknown... probably varies slightly with each Quicktime release.
Price: Free.
Encoder Platforms:
Many.
Decoder Platforms:
Many.
Block Size:
16
Automatic Keyframes?:
Since every frame is a keyframe, this is not relevant.


Sorenson first appeared as the flagship codec of Quicktime 3. It was significantly better than the codecs that were used previously (Mainly CinePak). The encoder was updated when Quicktime 4 was released. Sorenson 2 encoded films could be played back on Quicktime 3. It was faster, had higher quality, and had a lot more features. Through versions 2.1, and 2.2, Sorenson added Altivec, and Multiprocessor support to the Sorenson codec.

Quicktime 5 was meant to include Sorenson 3. Due to unexplained bugs, it was not included in the final releas. Unlike Sorenson 2, Sorenson 3 would not run on previous versions of Quicktime. Sorenson released a beta of their profestional codec to the public... so many people got a glimpse of what it could do. It encoded much faster, and produced smaller files, and looked better than Sorenson 2.

The final of Sorenson 3 was finally included with Quicktime 5.02.

Quality/Size:
Compared to the codecs that were available on Quicktime before Sorenson, it was a big deal, but compared to modern codecs such as: 3ivx, and On2 VP3, it is left in the dirt. Sorenson 3 is better than Sorenson 2, but even it can't compare to 3ivx, or VP3.

Sorenson 2 is comparible to MPEG1. Since there are many different encoders for MPEG1, some are better than Sorenson 2, others are worse. Sorenson 3, is generally better than MPEG1, in my opinion.

Other people have achieved much better quality from Sorenson 3 than I have.

Encoding:
Sorenson 2 is fairly slow at encoding. Even with fast encoding turned on, it is still quite slow.

Sorenson 3, on the other hand is very fast at encoding. It is the fastest codec that I played around with, and that was without it on its fastest setting.

Decoding:
Sorenson 2 seems to be optimised for the playback of smaller movies. It doesn't handle large movies too well. When it gets a movie that is a bit big for it, it generally stutters.

Sorenson 3 seems more geared to larger movies.


Comprehensiveness of settings:
Both Sorenson 2, and Sorenson 3 professional codecs have more settings than most people will ever need.

Objective ratings:
Current Version:
2.2 (or 3)
Price:
free,$300 or so
Encoder Platforms;
Classic MacOS, Windows
Decoder Platforms:
Classic MacOS, MacOSX, Windows
Block Size:
16
Automatic Keyframes?
Yes

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Originally posted by Markfuscius
Of course, you could just require that everybody not using divx or an mpeg codec include their codec on their submission. You'd need to email all the teams in your area, but that'd probably be easiest for any of those rare xvid fans.

If you are an xvid fan, would you happen to have an install file for the xvid codec? Any xvid i have plays all green, and when i try to re-encode it it gives me problems with the audio and stops.

[Markfuscius]

For Xvid, try nic.dnsalias.com, or just punching Xvid into google.
I did and saw at least 5 sites saying they had the binaries and .dll files.

On another note: quicktime supports mpeg1? Then I guess I'll use Quicktime
Now I just need to find a way to convert a standard .mpg into a .mov so I can or vice versa so I can make VCDs for the rest of the team

[Specialagentjim]

Mpeg4!! No mpeg1...its ooollddd..lol Anywayz...

To answer your question, get adobe premiere. Its the best for doing all video editing (that I've used...I have yet to get my hands on avid or final cut pro ) It lets you export to whatever format you want.

I'd also like to take this oppurtunity to remphaize (I can't spell....) rendering to TARGAs. Targas are awesome for everything, for showing off and for having some nice uncompressed video or stills. Any questions IM me @ specialagentjim

and im off!