I've been going around in circles trying to find a good compromise between rendering speeds and image quality. I am using cartoon figures, without shadows, so it really doesn't have to be anything fancy. I read in this forum that DivX was the best codec to use, but when I try it the colors are mottled, looks terrible. I've messed around with the DivX settings, rendering settings (both P4 and Firefly) and it still looks lousy compared to uncompressed frames. If anyone is successfully using DivX I'd appreciate it if you would post both your rendering and DivX settings.

well u can try a diff version of divx i use the 4. somthings alot or try making it uncropressed and compressing it in say adobe premiere or somthing

Attached Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx

Or you could try the Microsoft verion of MPEG4. Very simple controls and generally good, try: Render to bitmap sequence first off, so that you can try multiple CODECs and settings with something like VirtualDub rather than re-render (you're probably doing this already but it doesn't hurt to mention). CODEC: Microsoft MPEG-4 Version 2 Keyframe every: 1 seconds Smoothness/Crispness: 0 (left-most/smoothest) Data Rate: 6000 Kbps Keyframe is the most variable of these - if movement is slow and there aren't camera changes (or they are rare) then a larger number will allow more bandwidth for intermediate frames. Extreme values (like 9999) CAN be useful but make seeking within the video VERY slow. Next up for changing is the data rate - if the resultant filesize is too large for your purposes then drop it - but be aware that the lower the data rate the greater the chance of unpleasant video effects. There's a potential trade-off between file size and quality, basically. Which version of the CODEC you have/use is up to you, but a V8 or V9 CODEC package from MS can be obtained from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx One of the other advantages of MSMPEG4V2 is that Windows users don't ahve to go and download & install anything. No spyware, no extra charges - unless their setup has been modified Media Player will prompt them to auto-download the video CODEC if they don't ahve it already (and they probably do).

transco, are you using DivX within Poser? In my experience, the best results occur when you animate in Poser with no compression at all, the compress later using another app. I usually use VirtualDub, which I believe is still free. Poser (4) doesn't seem to do a very good job with compression, for whatever reasons. Also, try experimenting with different settings in the codec itself. You can't do that in Poser, you'll have to use the "Decoder Configuration" tool that came with the app. Some media apps allow even more control. Some people seem to believe that there's only one default use of a given codec, but in the case of DivX 5.05, that's not true. It really does seem to be the best codec for the quality-to-filesize ratio, particularly as regards posting movies to the 'net. Again, simply selecting the DivX codec in Poser isn't the best way to use it for one's Poser animations.

I've used Divx quite a bit. I really like it, but I jack the compression way down for the best quality picture. Every once in a while I'll get a scene that doesn't look good, so I'll resort to the mpeg4 codec for certain scenes. The problem with the mpeg4 codec is that it doesn't handle blues and reds well at all. They typically end up looking very pixilated...especially if they're bright. If you're looking to save space but give yourself the BEST image quality you can get, I'd highly recommend the Huffy codec. It's supposed to be a lossless compression, which means that your image quality isn't suppose to suffer at all. The biggest problems that I find with the huffy codec is that it can run kind of choppy on some computers, and it still requires a good deal of hard drive space...It's still better than uncompressed frames though. I find that I'm using it more and more though. Hope this helps.

Divx 5.x is only better than Divx 4.x for multipass encoding, which you probably can not do from within Poser. Dale LaRoy Splitstone