Codec

[Spiffing]

Guys, I am a few weeks away from finishing a very different kind of AH movie. But I don't want to lose the quality this time. I've seen several posts on codecs but I'm still a little confused. Can someone walk me through step by step how you convert to a movie without losing quality, what coded I should use, and how do I even select a codec manually? I've extracted footage using fraps at maximum screen size at 30fps. Oh, and how can I remove http://www.fraps.com from my movie?

Thanks
(keep you're eye out for my next release soon)

[Pooface]

i wait in anticipation

im not too sure about codecs, i never used one, but if you want to get rid of the fraps watermark you have to pay for it, so it depends, is your movie important enough to subscribe for the full version of fraps? if you're trying to make it more professional, and its for a wider audience, you might want to register it, but if its just a small AH film for our community, its your choice really

anyways, good luck. i cant wait to see the finished product!

[Morpheus]

To get rid of the fraps logo you simply crop the film. I recommend in the furture you just put out the 15 bucks and pay for fraps. That will get rid of the logo all together.

As far as codec and how to select it, what program are you using to edit your film with? I use wmv9 quite often. It holds good audio/video quality while keeping the file size down to a reasonable size.

[Spiffing]

I'm using Windows Movie maker for editing. I actually have no clue about codecs or even how you select one! Where can I do this in WMM?

[Morpheus]

Well, windows movie maker doesnt give you a whole lot of options to use.


Rendering a movie is very simple. When you're finished with the editing, go to File, then scroll down to "Save Movie". From there you can select how you wish to compress your film.

You can mess with the compression ratio from there. At the top is "Play back qualityP. Click on the arrow and scroll down to other. (I can assure you that if you choose the basic "High Quality" setting you will be disapointed.) After you select "Other", go down to the "Profile" selection and scroll down to "Video for broadband NTSC (2mbps total). Try rendering the film in that. I tried saving a couple clips and that gave me the best quality I could with WMM while keeping the file size down.

If the final product isn't to your liking, then try other profiles there for compression settings. But keep in mind that you're using WMM. A free program that comes with windows and one that doesnt offer a while heck of alot.

[Krusty]

What would you recommend for Premiere Pro?

[Morpheus]

For compression?

Basicly a good film is one that anyone can play without having to go and download special codecs just to watch, and one that isn't so big you have to start the download in the morning and wait till after dinner to watch it. Edit: Divx is one codec I do not consider to be "special" or out of the ordinary because it is so common in todays films.

I have used divx, quick time, real media, you name it. The easiest one to use is WMV9. I am rendering a quick clip now from a film I'm making in Lock-on and have tried all of the settings in WMM. I'm not that impressed with the quality of the final product with WMM. I'll post the differences between the quality in WMM and a program like sony vegas when I get through in a few minutes.

[Spiffing]

I just downloaded and fddled around with Windown Media Encoder Seriers 9. What i've found is that I can throw the clip into WME9 from fraps, then import into my collections in WMM. The quality in WMM is bad, but as pooface mentioned, when you save to movie and select "best quality" it transforms into a perfectly good quality film when played in WMM as a finished product. I'm testing different compresssion rates in WME9, Morph which would u recommend, i've tried High Quality which took ages on the second pass, DVD was ok, and Windows Stream was ok.

So I lined the same clip, just compressed differently in WME and then converted from WMM to a movie, but all the clips back to back looked the same, no real difference?

[Morpheus]

It takes time man... Quality that is. The better you want the film to look in the end the longer you're going to have to sit there and wait for it to finnish rendering. That's part of making movies. I've had to sit and wait for 3 hours or more for some of the longer films I've done.