DVD quality animations

[Dave Buckley]

Do you guys have any best practises for getting to your final output in terms of quality (file export options etc)

 

I have been asked to produce a small animation as an example to a company. They have said they would like to be able to produce DVD quality animations that can be played back on a computer at DVD quality.

 

File size is not an issue (although i do have access to Autodesk Cleaner if somebody wishes to guide me through using it)

 

I also have access to 3DS Max, and the entire Adobe Production Suite

 

Also have access to the majority of Autodesk Products

 

What path would you guys take or DO you already take to get to your final output???

 

My guess would be, export from Max as TIF image sequence at same resolution as final output screen so possibly 1024x768 at 25fps

 

Then import image sequence into premiere project (confused by project settings at this point)

 

Then add sound, titles, transistions etc and then export (again confused by settings at this point)

 

Please advise or guide me guys

[Guest darmilatron]

My workflow is usually,

 

Max (modelling animation lighting)

export as tif / tga sequance depending whether you need the alpha channel

Photoshop (generating textures)

Final cut pro - or premiere in your case (adding titles and soundtrack)

Dvd studio pro - or equivelent in CS suite in your case (dvd creation)

 

This workflow presumes you are wanting to play this back as a video dvd rather than a data dvd.

 

as far as resolutions go I would recommend sticking with established standards as video compressors work better with less artifacts at these resolutions.

 

4:3 ratio

720 x 576 @ 25 fps- pal

 

16:9 ratio

1024 x 576 @ 25 fps - pal widescreen

 

or if you have plenty of processing power I would render at 720p HD format

1280 x 720 @ 25fps

 

Hope this helps a little and good luck with your project

[STRAT]

 

16:9 ratio

1024 x 576 @ 25 fps - pal widescreen

 

this is our general resolution we render at too when making dvd's in the uk here

[Dave Buckley]

cheers guys, this is what i thought, but needed confirmation

 

i guess it all depends on the quality of the final render aswel

 

coz for it to look clean the renders must be sharp huh??

 

or do you sharpen each frame in photoshop???

[STRAT]

nope. sharpening each frame in photoshop is not an option when you have 1000's of frames to drop onto dvd

 

we render through vray, so use a sharpening filter during the render stage. just a bit though.

[Dave Buckley]

ah ok, well i'm a mental ray guy so i guess i'l just use the best filter possible and get my settings right first time

[mattclinch]

you could always setup a actionscript that loads/sharpens/saves if you wanted to sharpen in PS. otherwise, AE will do exactly the same thing to the clip.

[Dave Buckley]

matthew my son, that was the answer i was hoping for.

 

another thing matt, do you have any examples of your work that i can look at??? you have all the answers

 

but i haven't seen your work yet

[Bugga_Guy]

Why don't you just sharpen the frame/movie using After Effects. It is alot easier, I cannot bear to hear anyone apply a filter to 1000 frames even using action scripting.

[Dave Buckley]

i probably could but haven't really used after effects, how would i do it and i'l let you know if i can

[RobNJ73]

The infrequent experience I have with AE (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), it's really set up just like Photoshop is, in terms of layers and filters. The main difference (in this case) is that each layer also comes with a timeline.

 

And if I'm again not mistaken (and I could very easily be), doesn't Mental Ray have the same, or some of the same, AA filters that VRay does? I haven't used MR much, but I seem to remember seeing familiar names in the AA filters.

[Dave Buckley]

MR has box, gauss, mitchell, lanczos and there is one more, i can't check as i'm rendering at the minute as always. Maybe i'm looking at the wrong filters? my mental ray knowledge is self taught so forgive me guys for gettin things wrong

[trino]

 

 

 

16:9 ratio

1024 x 576 @ 25 fps - pal widescreen

 

 

 

What would be this one in NTSC at 30 fps ?? i would like to know, thanks.

[johnvid]

Dont forget most DVD's are probably interlaced, you need to verify if they are happy for it to only be played on computer/progressive screens, interlacing will make things look sharper too, and your motion should also be smoother. Asking for DVD quality is a bit strange, coz the quality of the DVD is governed by the compression data rate...and for standard dvd's the highest you can go is about 9.2 or 9200kb, but lower if an audio track is to be used.

 

Rendering out to a higher definition than 1024x576 if you can afford to, would be a good way to go, as you can scale it down and perhaps increase the sharpness at the same time just by scaling it. Then maybe if they see the HD footage you could get them to pay for that too...Even if they dont need HD, you should have it for your showreel

 

The steps to treat & output interlaced footage in AE are a little different to progressive sequences. You need to get the frame interpretation right ie treat as interlaced, upperfield first...

 

Even if you use sharpening AA in MR, maybe you could also use more filters in AE, try to save a Zdepth version then you could apply some sharpening or blur to near & far objects in the animation. You can treat movies in photoshop cs3 without scripting. You should be able to do all your output with AE, i think it can do most of what cleaner does.

[Dave Buckley]

ok lets scrap the dvd quality part, i think it was just a reference for good quality

 

if i export from max as tif sequence take into AE or PRemiere, do all i need to do then what settings would i need to export from AE/Premiere to get maximum quality video, all PAL 25fps to b played on TV or Computer???

[Spooner04]

We typically render out a targa sequence, make a premiere file with custom desktop settings and export it out as a quicktime mov for computer playback or as an m4v for dvd playback, then the boss authors it in encore i think. Typical res has been 720x480, but we are looking at whether or not we want to continue with that res, as it's a bit low by today's standards.

 

I would render a range of the various wide screen definitions suggested, 720x480 to 1920x1080, put them together in premiere as one movie with each still running for several seconds, export out the movie and get it in front of the client with the estimated cost for rendering, so they can decide.

 

I think this is good because 1.) they make the decision up front, so if they want to go to a higher def later in the project ,thereby increasing your render times, than you charge more. 2.) it lets you run some basic tests in premiere with various file types, sizes and formats. 3.) It gives you a better gauge on how to bid the rendering aspect of the job as high-def frames are going to take around 4 times longer to render than their standard def counterpart.

 

If your going to have to end up using a render farm, it might not be a bad idea to tell them that your fee includes a standard def delivery, of 720x480 or whatever, but then if they want a higher def version they will just have to pay the fee for the render farm.

[johnvid]

For TV it should be interlaced, butTV it will display 25p also(interlaced rendering takes twice as long as, so I have offered many a progressive animation, will only do interlaced if asked), a couple of years ago if someone asked for PAL, you would only have a few frame sizes to choose from, but now with HD there are many more, But if they want it to play from a normal DVD and or to be incorporated into DVD author SW you need to keep within the limits of the data rates i mentioned earlier..that is mpeg2 compression, but if it was for PC playback you have many different codecs to choose from...many will deteriorate the quality but some can be set with data rates that exceed the DVD spec(if playing from the PC you use higher data rates/better quality), some will handle more than 8bits and have different colour compression encoding 4:4:4, being the best quality, but dont know if any dvd software will author that? but it might be able to be played from the PC with VLC as for which is the best codec maybe more answers will follow.

 

also quicktime will do mpeg2 but i always use windows codecs for this, many times i have used Procoder for this, which is like cleaner, but premiere's encoder should have some presets, but better quality could be achieved with other codecs, oh don't use VBR variable bit rate, as quality between frames will be reduced, use a fixed high bit rate.

 

TRy and get extra cash for HD!

 

and for some more HD Quality issues read this http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4275063.html

Edited July 28, 2008 by johnvid
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