2004 Codec Requirements

[SteveC116]

If you have read the guide for this years animation competition you will see that they have specifically said no to DivX:

Acceptable Codecs: DV-NTSC and Cinepak. Do not use DiVX or any other non-standard Codec

Am I the only one out there who finds this to make no sense? Cinepak? Cinipak was developed to play small movies on the 386 and 030 systems from a single speed CD-ROM drive. Cinepak is a good choice if you want your movie to play on a wide range of systems - but I fail to see why it is chosen over codecs like XviD and DivX.

Am I wrong in remembering that people were allowed to use DivX last year? Last year Lev was the one in charge of converting the rendered targas into the appropriate movie file so I'm not sure - but I believe that we used the DivX codec.

Also, as some of you may remember, our animation experience at the competition was horrible. The VHS made with 116's animation looked similar to that Pokemon episode which caused seizures in Japan. If this is because of the DivX codec, I don't see why we should be penalized because the person in charge of the tape can't convert these movie files correctly.

- - - - - - - - -

Or maybe I'm totally off. If somebody could respond who understands codecs better than I do that would be appreciated. What exactly is this DV-NTSC format? Is it any good? Am I not giving cinepak enough credit?

Basically what I'm asking is: what codec do you all recommend we should use to, ignoring file sizes, create a high quality animation?