The best compression codec?

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

I have a big animation I did yesterday and the file size came out to 121 megabytes!
What is the best codec to shrink it down to a nice small size?

2

I have used the DviX codec with a nice size to quality ratio in the Windows side of things. But I hope you do know that any codec that does a good job with regard to size will give you some loss of quality/artifacts … I vaguely remember Rambobaby posted something about what he thought was the best codec about a week ago … You might want to do a search on that .
How long is your animation ? I know some people are still on 56k modems but in this day and age a long animation that is 121 megabytes isn’t that big …

3

The animation is only 16 seconds.
Is the Divx codec free? And how do I encode
my .avi in it? I already rendered the animation,
I just want to reduce the file size more so I could
post it as a WIP here.

As a .RAR, the video is 45 megabytes (not dial-up friendly).

4

121 megabytes and only 16 seconds ? Yeah you need a compression codec . And yes it is free to use though it’s not Open Source - I think it watermarks clips of a certain size - though I am not sure about the particulars . Here is their site : http://www.divx.com/ .
Once you have downloaded installed the codec/player you can just use Blender’s Video Sequence Editor (load your clip there and Enable all codecs in the System and OpenGL tab of the User Preferences window and select the DivX codec in the Format panel in F10-Scene context of the buttons window and just render out to a new file) . I just use the default values and usually get a 10 to 1 ratio for compression size .

5

Xvid is FLOSS and (IMO) gives a better quality to size ratio.

6

@N30N : Thanks for the link … but their windows binaries seem to be down at the moment …

7

Thanks for the links Vertex Pusher and N30N! The Xvideo codec
brought the animation down to 12.6 megabytes.
And even though the Windows binaries are down, I googled around
and found the codec at a different site http://www.divx-digest.com/software/xvid.html
Xvideo is a great codec. I highly recommend it after seeing what it
can do.

Thanks again!

:cool:

8

i always use quicktime when I render from Blender. I use the sorenson3 codec, I dont limit the data rate, and I use anything from high to best. But even medium is decent if its a longer clip, or even like a movie. Just make sure that the FPS you set in the render is the same as in your timeline.