How to export a master?

How to export a master?

by Jerry Smith

on Oct 27, 2016 at 9:03:22 pm

I have some videos that are quite simple, but very sharp. For the purposes of this thread, you can imagine that they are all created a few solid shapes, a few solid colors, and text. They look very sharp. There is just a little motion blur here and there. All were created with 8 bpc.

I would like to export the videos and have masters and then do any future encoding from those masters and not have to open AE.

I don't care about file size AT ALL.

Here's what I'm thinking of using:

Format: QuickTime
Video Codec: Animation
Quality: 100
Render at Maximum Depth
Depth: 32
Key frame every 1 frame.
Use Maximum Render Quality

These are the video settings for the preset that I made in AME.

I can handle the audio settings I think.

What do you think of those settings? If I hadn't synced up the audio in AE, I would have probably looked into using a sequence.

Are these settings 100% lossless? My typography and edges are perfect and for the purposes of this thread are my main concern.

Thanks.

Re: How to export a master?

by Jerry Smith

on Oct 27, 2016 at 9:05:11 pm

All my edges were created with pixel perfection in Photoshop for example. And I want to preserve those for posterity without having to open AE again.

Re: How to export a master?

by Dave LaRonde

on Oct 27, 2016 at 9:07:01 pm

Render away. Those settings are OK.

Dave LaRonde
Promotion Producer
KGAN (CBS) & KFXA (Fox) Cedar Rapids, IA

Re: How to export a master?

by Jerry Smith

on Oct 27, 2016 at 9:10:58 pm

Thanks Dave.

Why do they call the codec "Animation"?

Is it saving a my color hexes for each pixel? That's really what I want.

Re: How to export a master?

by Dave LaRonde

on Oct 27, 2016 at 10:01:35 pm

Beats the heck out of me what it saves. It's run-length encoding, it's lossless compression, and that's good enough for me. As in "NO LOSS".

The codec has been called "Animation" ever since I started working in digital video in 1995, and doubtlessly before that.
I suppose they could have called it "Clarence", but that doesn't sound serious enough, I guess.

Dave LaRonde
Promotion Producer
KGAN (CBS) & KFXA (Fox) Cedar Rapids, IA

Re: How to export a master?

by Eric Santiago

on Oct 28, 2016 at 12:28:34 pm

[Dave LaRonde] "The codec has been called "Animation" ever since I started working in digital video in 1995, and doubtlessly before that.
I suppose they could have called it "Clarence", but that doesn't sound serious enough, I guess."

LOL!

I beat you by one year (1994).

Yes that codec option has been around for a long time but I do recall reading a book from Trish Meyer that Animation was geared towards RGB colors such as cel, vector drawn types basically solid colors.

Its been years so I would have to dig up book.

I am sure someone here knows the answer :)

Re: How to export a master?

by Dave LaRonde

on Oct 28, 2016 at 3:18:15 pm

Yeah, Trish's description stands to reason. It's Run Length Encoding. It takes a row of pixels and assigns Color A to X number of pixels, Color B to Y number of pixels, etc.

Animated Lower third file sizes are REALLY small in Animation -- there's row after row of Color Nothing!

Dave LaRonde
Promotion Producer
KGAN (CBS) & KFXA (Fox) Cedar Rapids, IA

Re: How to export a master?

by Walter Soyka

on Oct 31, 2016 at 1:17:10 pm

[Eric Santiago] "Yes that codec option has been around for a long time but I do recall reading a book from Trish Meyer that Animation was geared towards RGB colors such as cel, vector drawn types basically solid colors. Its been years so I would have to dig up book. I am sure someone here knows the answer :)"

As Dave describes, it uses something called "run length encoding." Basically, when you have a "run" of, say, 100 pixels of pure red, Animation/RLE encoding says "100*[255,0,0]" instead of "[255,0,0],[255,0,0],[255,0,0],[255,0,0],[255,0,0][255,0,0],[255,0,0],..."

Because RLE compresses runs of color, it's especially suitable to cel animation with large areas of pure, flat color.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive [twitter] | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]