Ny team is having a problem. We found a video editor called avid freedv, and it is great. The problem is, it will not export the video with a dv-ntsc compressor, which is required by first for the 2006 animation. Does anyone know of a free video editor that will export a .mov file using the dv-ntsc compressor?
We have a very small budget for the animation (we’re broke!). 
iMovie HD (that comes standard on any Mac in recent history) comes with DV/DVCPRO - NTSC as an export option. You’ll want to double-check to be sure, but that should work. You’d just need to find a Mac in your immediate vicinity.
Adobe Premier Pro should be capable of that. you can download a mostly complete 30 day trial version from Adobe
My team does not have access to a Mac, and although Vegas works to export, the resulting video looks not good at all - much poorer quality than an AVI with DV-NTSC compression of the same size. Any tricks to get .MOV files with better quality while using the DV-NTSC codec?
There is a trick my team found out. You can use the video post in 3ds max as a primitive form of a video editing. Since the required format is in the program already all you have to do is put the uncompressed avi files back into it.
Even using the 3dsmax export of the video, it is full of artifacts, and does not look acceptable to submit. I’m going to have my friend try to export using Premiere, which we’ve used in the past, and we’ll see whether that gives better results. I admit I am kind of stumped here. Is anyone else having similar problems?
Is the DV-NTSC compression format the same as the DV/DVCPRO-NTSC format?
I’m having the same problem. I’m using Adobe AfterEffects 6.5 and exporting to “DV/DVCPRO - NTSC”. The image quality is absolutely terrible - it’s impossible to read text and make out details.
Does anyone remember what format we had to render to last year? If we can’t find an acceptable solution I’m considering uploading 2 - one crappy one that meets their expectations, and a second using a different (though just as common) codec that looks decent. I’ll experiment a little more with the export function to see if I can get it looking OK and let you guys know the results.
Good luck 
I’m seeing the same terrible look exporting from Premiere 6.0 using DV/DVCPRO - NTSC at 100% quality.
If anyone hears of other options we are allowed to use to improve the quality and keep the file size under 250MB, please post here.
Thanks.
Id have to agree that the new codec requirement is bad. Any idea why they arent letting us use Cinepak this year? At least I was able to read my text efficiently with that.
Ok, I think I have found the bottom of this codec issue. Seems that Apple came out with a new, improved, DV-NTSC codec with Quicktime 7. Also, if you have QT7, but installed certain other codecs afterwards, it changes the Apple DV codec to a different one, which does not play very well in Quicktime. To fix this issue, install (or reinstall) Quicktime 7 from the link below, and then rerender your animation on the highest settings (4:3 Progressive Scan worked best for me). My animation looks sharper than I’ve seen it before, even the raw uncompressed version, and is only 135 megs.
Helpful links:
http://www.m2w.net/reviews/dvcompression9808.html - Read about DV-NTSC.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html - Quicktime 7 DL Link.
I want to render scenes to the DV-NTSC format, Is this possible?
Yes dvc pro describes the track width on the tape not the data and compression format. (dvcpro50 is another story)
Huh? 
Could you put that in plain english?
I’m new to compression formats.
I’m having the same problem and have lost many hours trying all kinds of combinations of settings in exporting the final post production. I’ve used Adobe Premier for the last two years but exported in quicktime default which is Motion JPEG A compression also in 640 x 480 format. I’ve exproted in nearly all other codecs and they all seem fine except for the DV/DVCPRO NTSC required by AutoDesk. It’s also a large file, ours is 200 MB whereas the “movie” compression gives a great, crisp, and smooth animation. Does anyone know who we might contact at FIRST or AutoDesk to get help on this problem? I’ve used the Max video post and its difficult to work with and really don’t want to start editing again…We’re done except for the final render.
Thanks
OK DVC is both a tape format and a compression format. The first part describes how you record digitally on a DV tape, The second part is how you turn full bandwidth video in a compressed form that you can record on tape or on a computer. The whole story of compression takes many paragraphs to explain including parts of the history of television. Full bandwidth digital television (SDI) is 270mbits/second, DV or DVCPRO compression is 25mbits/second. SDI is also :422 which describes how much color information is skipped as you scan (history of TV) a line DV is :411 which skips more color information (thus helping to leave some data behind) Codex are short names for encode and decode methods that transform TV pictures from on (mostly uncompressed) form to another compressed form, that can be uncompressed and displayed on Computers or on TV monitors. Sorry to ramble so there really is not real short English answer. The other issue is DV/DVCPRO is normally a 720 x 486 frame and if your animation is 640 x 480 you get really bad scaling issues. I can ask some of the animators I’ve worked with in the past if there is a fast and good method to get a good looking DV/DVCPRO animation.
@ Tom Higgins - Try reinstalling Quicktime 7 (or installing it new) and rerendering (from Adobe) with the highest possible quality settings, using DV-NTSC.
I have installed QuickTime 7 as suggested, however I still get the same problem using Adobe Premiere 6.0.
Using 3ds Max 8, there is no problem using the DV-NTSC compression.
The alternative I’m going to use is to bring all of the audio and video into Premiere to line everything up, then ouput as a single movie using some method that still looks good (maybe some other compression).
Video post in 3ds max is simple enough just to create an Image input event set to the length of the entire animation and an Image output event set to the DV-NTSC compression for the final Quicktime movie that will be submitted.
Hopefully my plan works. 
I tried that strategy, with very poor results, but I’d be curious to see if it works for you, since QT7 did not.
I’m just wondering…AutoDesk requires 720 X 480 yet Max renders in 720 x 486. We changed the 486 to 480 before we rendered. Is this issue a typo of does it affect any of this? Is there more than one 720 x format? I’ll try the QT7 in a minute or so.