I’ve been using the Xvid codec. I’m making clips with blender and Gimp and with multiple processes the lossyness adds up.
So what codec gives the best result with 2.62?
Well if you’re using JPEG in GIMP then there’s a way to avoid lossyness - lossless JPEGs, in short. Just turn the quality up to 100 and in the drop-down options change the sampling to either “1x1, 1x1, 1x1” or the 4x4 equivalent depending on if you’re in 2.6.11 or 2.8 respectively. For PNGs just turn down the compression to 0. …at least, these processes have helped me several times, but I haven’t tested them out in this sort of situation :o
For video formats I’m afraid I can’t help you there either - still trying to figure it out myself. I usually use the h264&xvid combo (or something along those lines) with bit-rate usually turned up, gives me not-to-shabby results, but like I said I’m only starting to figure it out :o
Quicktime: Animation Codec.
I thought that was deprecated.
For all animations, i render out as image sequences with blender… Much more reliable, to view the image sequences i use a program called DJV, its opensource and awesome.
Then if I need to make a video file out of them, i use the ‘ProRes’ quicktime codec, encoded via ffmpeg, pretty simple commandline option to convert it across (ffmpeg -r 24 -i C:\location o\image\sequence.%04d.tif -vcodec prores C:\location o\output.mov the r is framerate, the i is input location, %04d is an image sequence with a length of 4 padding, vcodec is the codec to encode as, and finally is the movie output location)
I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I’ll just go back to raw AVI.
Hey Blonder, you should really look at rendering to image sequence, as doublebishop had mentioned.
In a professional workflow, one doesn’t render to animation, one renders to stills.
The reason being that if the render is interrupted, or if changes need to be made, one doesn’t have to re-render the entire sequence.
I’m partial to PNG as it is lossless.
Here’s some more information on rendering to stills and how to make that into a movie using free software.
The author uses 3DS max in the article but the real interest is in using the free RadVideoTools.
If you want to go open source, or are working on a Linux box, use DJV, as db mentioned prior.
Well…I find the Blender-to-PNG exporting process is a bit lossy, actually. Not to mention it’s slow as a snail for who knows what reason. I generally export to TARGA when rendering a sequence - yes, they’re a lot “heavier” than PNGs but they save much more quickly and they’re really lossless compared to Blender’s PNG system.
Admittedly, the PNGs I save are generally okay, with no quality loss. However, the quality will sometimes fall off (I’ve noticed it with turntables and smoke sims, mostly) so to be safe I prefer TARGAs. Just be ready for the large file size 
It’s the only one that’ll properly work on my old mac. (unless I want to do image sequences. And usually I try to avoid that).
Really? PNG is lossless. There is no lossy compression in PNG… As per http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG-Rationale.html and every other documentation on the PNG specification.
One would have to purposefully hack a deviant compression scheme into the PNG compressor. While certain people have, in fact, done just exactly this for whatever purpose suited them, I find it hard to believe that the Blender devs would do as such.
Any devs want to confirm or deny ?
Hmm…good point. In that case I think it might be an optical illusion that happens sometimes, or a render bug, I’m not sure. Render bug is probably unlikely though, so my bets are on optical illusions.
I know it’s slow though, and that’s my main gripe with it. Like I said, I usually get great results with PNG, just that it takes forever.
Can any devs shed some light on this speed issue? Along with aomeoni’s question, of course 
I always render out PNG image sequences, then I open the sequence in the movie clip editor, add the clip in the VSE, and then render out a lossless AVI 
I found that to be the best way.
Hey Blonder, you should really look at rendering to image sequence, as doublebishop had mentioned.
In a professional workflow, one doesn’t render to animation, one renders to stills.The reason being that if the render is interrupted, or if changes need to be made, one doesn’t have to re-render the entire sequence.
I’m partial to PNG as it is lossless.
Here’s some more information on rendering to stills and how to make that into a movie using free software.
The author uses 3DS max in the article but the real interest is in using the free RadVideoTools.
If you want to go open source, or are working on a Linux box, use DJV, as db mentioned prior.
My workflow is multi-tiered and broken down in outline form with small tested clips that are generated from and logged into a dynamic script. It works almost perfectly for what I do and it’s appendable to the final cut. I like doing it that way because it can be embellished throughout. The “Pros” tend to create projects rigidly from a script and storyboards with an entire team working on it. Their workflow is too much for one person to create an entire project. That environment brings it’s own dynamics and without some rigidity it would be difficult to remain coordinated.
I find stills generally cumbersome. I like the versatility of portable network graphics but I prefer the simplicity of the targa file. In the past I’ve tended to use small, raw, tested clips.
3DS Max and Blender are two completely different animals.
It’s the only one that’ll properly work on my old mac. (unless I want to do image sequences. And usually I try to avoid that).
That is a great codec. I’m using XP and Ubuntu though.
certainly useful though…
I tend to use PNG’s as a temporary output, if i am doing quick renders and what not… for final renders i always stick with EXR (half float is enough for most cases, full float is for people who go for the win)… Depending on the shot, sometimes Multilayer, sometimes just standard…
I don’t know about saving png files from Blender, but for textures, I’ve found they are sometimes problematic, especially if the texture is partly transparent. I find tiff to be far more predictable.