Pieces of blender rig toggling invisibility without discernible reason?

[EJMonkey]

Hello. There is a .blend file attached if anyone would like to help me.
I am very new to the Blender program, and am frankly overwhelmed by the sheer number of options and places to check when something goes wrong… I am getting better slowly, but the attached animation I have made is practically finished, except for a couple of things.

First off… For some reason, the main character’s left eye randomly disappears several times, and then comes back a few frames later. (The first time it happens is from frames 169-213) This being my first ever animation, I was trying to keep things simple, and I never touched the visibility settings for any of the objects in the entire project. Nevertheless, I went in to the outliner and tried to find the eye object to see if it had somehow been toggled. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even find the eye object. I also poked around the dope sheet, but couldn’t find any invisibility- changing keyframes.
Could someone please explain to me why my character’s eye is vanishing, and how to stop this problem?

Secondly, I have been having a bit of trouble with exporting the file as an animation. I tried to export it as a raw .avi file, but then after it was done, when I tried to open it with the default video player, quick time (my computer is a mac), only 8 seconds of the animation are there, and the rest is cut off (yes, all the frames were exported. the start and stop times are correct.)! …But when I play that same file with the blender player, it shows the entire animation! Unfortunately for me, I can’t even record my screen to use the video file from the blender player, since the blender player window is too small to see the entire animation.
My screenshots fail to upload, apparently, but blender player’s window basically just shows me a corner of the animation, and not the whole thing, and there is no more room on my screen to expand the window further. Should I try exporting the animation to quick-time format, instead of .avi, or what? Is there a way to resize the play resolution in the blender player window?

Thanks in advance!

Attachments

MinecraftAnimation.blend (1.17 MB)

[Richard_Marklew]

First off… For some reason, the main character’s left eye randomly disappears several times, and then comes back a few frames later. (The first time it happens is from frames 169-213)
The faces creating the eye are not properly moving with the head movement so they move inside the head.

Secondly, I have been having a bit of trouble with exporting the file as an animation. I tried to export it as a raw .avi file, but then after it was done, when I tried to open it with the default video player, quick time
Avi RAW is an uncompressed intermediate format, not used for a final output render.
Manual entry for video output formats http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Output/Video

Should I try exporting the animation to quick-time format, instead of .avi, or what?
No-one is stopping you from trying it and see if it gives you the result you want

[EJMonkey]

Thank you very much! … Do you know how I can solve this problem? …I’ve been having difficulty navigating blender to find the eye object, so I can’t really adjust it’s movement, yet… Can you tell me how to select the eye? I just tried going into mesh view. I still could only select the head as a whole, and not the individual eyes.

Ah. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense, actually.
I tried the quick time output right after posting this-- It turned out to be precisely what I needed. Thanks! I just asked before trying it because I was afraid it would be a bad idea to try something I didn’t understand, and possible have it mess something up.

[EJMonkey]

Ah- Ha! Thank you! By going into the wire- frame view, and changing to edit mode on the head object, I was able to select the part of the eye I needed and tweak it. It is now just about perfect. Thanks again!