I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas on which quicktime 6.5 non-lossy compression codec is the best for cross platform work. I’m using PNG codec, which I assume is non-lossy…correct? It seems to have about a 20% better compression than ANIMATION.
My criteria for which codec to use are:
any thoughts ?
why?
(and does it have to be quicktime? sequenced files with seperate audio …)
I assume youre not looking for a codec best suited to play back your animation. The none codec is non-lossy and supports alpha channels but creates HUGE files. I generaly use the animation codec for exchanging files. If you want a non-lossy codec i dont think you can get around the big files. I sometimes use the DV codec when i dont need alpha channels, or JPG with a low setting. But JPG can mess up your fields (if you use fields).
You can always .zip or .rar your movie file to fit on a CD. %|
P.S. I think the PNG codec is lossy.
hope this helps,
MadMesh
PNG is a lossless format, so if a video version of it were lossy, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it?
PNG is non-lossy. For a comparison to various QT formats, I refer you all to:
http://www.discoverysystems.com/support/QuickTime%20CODEC%20comparison.doc
What I’m looking for is an archive format (not playback) from which I can derive footage in whatever format (e.g. file sequence, etc) is best for any given project. I like QT vs. file sequence for archive purposes as all my video AND audio is in one nice tidy package.
Looks like Quicktime PNG is it.
The Quicktime Animation CODEC is lossless.
so is PNG & it appears to me to do a better job at compression.
Ok, so riddle me this: do these codecs create staight or pre-multiplied alphas?
I think it depends on the application creating the mask (like After Effects has an option for this at render time).
The diference between QT anim and PNG would be mostly sound support on the QT file.
you know what.
i have alwasy used TGA for quictime work on MAC’s
render as a TGA with RGBA channels and save as a set of single images.
send them to quicktime and sallys your uncle it works LOL.
you may want to turn the TGA files into a FLIC file which should also be read in quicktime (FLIC is just a container to make all the TGA files into one file, like .tar container)
and to my knowledge PNG is not necisarilty lossless. i have seen Lossy PNG compression. and i think it can only hold a 2 bit alpha channel (the official PNG format i am thinking)
Alltaken
Png is lossles, but you can choose to use indexed color if you want, that you can do with most lossles formats!
And alpha channels are fully yfunctional!
A good thing when discussing thins like this is checking the actual specs out:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-png-multi.html
www.libpng.org is the official dev site.
Anyways PNG is a lossless image compression format. And it actually can hold a higher quality alpha channel than even TGA can, up to 16-bits for alpha!