Best format for HD Animation file

[M V]

So I have a 40 sec animation and I have exported it at 1920x1080 in MOV and MP4 format and both I and my client are having issues with playback. MOV is just choppy and useless and the MP4 works fine on my machine by my client is getting choppy replay also.

 

Can you guys recommend the best format to send HQ and high quality animations?

[John Dollus]

try using handbrake to fine tune for your playback device

[Scott Schroeder]

I usually upload it to Vimeo and set it up to be able to be downloaded. That way the end user gets a quality file that will generally play on most devices.

 

Other than that, I'd recommened using Adobe Encoder and use one of the youtube or vimeo presets.

[M V]

The client complained that the Vimeo stuff looked too compressed and wasn't crisp enough in quality.

[Scott Schroeder]

I'd still look into Adobe Encoder. Run an uncompressed movie file out of after effects then run about 3-4 different compressions out of Encoder and see which one plays best on the clients machine.

[Tommy L]

I usually upload it to Vimeo and set it up to be able to be downloaded. That way the end user gets a quality file that will generally play on most devices.

 

Other than that, I'd recommened using Adobe Encoder and use one of the youtube or vimeo presets.

 

I thought if you do that then the download is the original file, not the vimeo compressed one? I find the vimeo compression a little soft, but I dont have a pro account so Can only use 720, not 1080. That might make a difference.

Vimeo does have a tutorial on there help page for compressing files for upload. I did an experiment with my regular QTpro compression defaults versus their settings. The vimeo settings were a bit better.

[Nic H]

you will get the best encode if you export from handbrake or squeeze using x264 from an uncompressed file (prores, dnxhd or animation)

 

then i normally export high bitrate (30mbps or so) quicktimes for vimeo - far above the recommended preset bit rates for vimeo which are something like 5-8mbps...way too low and you get doubly nasty compression blocking / smearing

 

what settings are you using at the moment?

[neil poppleton]

I usually upload it to Vimeo and set it up to be able to be downloaded. That way the end user gets a quality file that will generally play on most devices.

 

Other than that, I'd recommened using Adobe Encoder and use one of the youtube or vimeo presets.

 

This is the workflow we use and works well. Original files are produced in adobe premiere CS4.

[Nic H]

doesn't that double compress it?

get a better result just delivering a mp4 out of premiere?

[Devin Johnston]

Playback could also be affected by your client's hardware, if there trying to play back a 1080p animation on an old computer or one with a crappy video card you'll get choppy results. I know you can't do anything about that and accusing your client of being stupid is generally looked down upon but it does happen.

[M V]

The animation was composed from still images in photoshop and rendered out using their video tools (which kinda suck). My options were limited. I had a 3GB MOV file which wasnt able to play smoothly and then I had a 7MB MP4 which was so compressed it looked like butt. I ended up importing the MOV into AE and just rendered it to a 100MB MP4 which worked really well. Thanks for all of your advice. Animation is a new territory for me, as you can tell. I guess AE is the only way to go with this stuff. Lesson learned.