Question about compiling

[apalrd]

I am not doing anything related to FIRST animation, and have not read the animation stuff, but my previous video knowlege tells me two things:

1. MOV = BAD. Unless the rules or directions specify them I would stay away from them. They are QuickTime files, and until you are done they are hard to work with because most software dosen't like them. They have good compression, so if you want to export to web they will work quite well, but use AVI or if you have to MPEG until you are done. Then, export the final composite in MOV and MPEG.

2. I have previously used Adobe PrPro for editing, it works great but is expensive. Any normal video editing software that accepts MOV's should work for compiling. On Windows WinMovieMaker won't like MOV's, but iMovie will like them very much (and only use them). Depending on your OS there are some free tools that are available, I have use Cinelerra on Ubuntu (note - it will really only run on a few linux distros and requires some work to install), my Windows software is all Adobe and fairly expensive. There may be a tool in the animation software to do it, I would check there first.