Do you have either Adobe Photoshop or Jasc's Paint Shop Pro? Both programs come with "animation" software (either Image Ready for PS or Animation Shop for PSP) that you can automatically import all 300 jpegs in a mantter of minutes. All it takes is you telling the program where the images are, and clicking ok. It's also easier to edit the finished animation, if you want to add any postwork or elements, or simply make some frames last longer than others. They both also export .avi's. I can't guarantee DIVX codec support, as I haven't invested the money in purchasing the recordable codec from Divx, but they may know in the Animation Forum here. As for the lip sync, I can't 100% answer your question (I don't have mimic, and can't begin to tell you how it works), but if you use mimic, then import that animation into D|S, render the frames as .jpg's, and save those, it's essentially rendering every frame of your future .avi. The main difference is this: First of all, before you render an animation, save your file. 9 times out of 10, if you've worked hard on something, it will crash during rendering if you didn't save it, lol. (Not scientific) If you start rendering to .avi, and your render crashes in the middle, you're left with a broken .avi that you'll have to delete. however, if you render to .jpeg frames, you can re-open your saved file after the crash to the exact frame where it crashed and continue your render from there. Another thing....most professional animation companies will render a scene in layers. In order to do that, you'll need to save the renders as .png's instead of .jpg's, mostly to remove the blank background easier. Then, render your layers (i.e. figures, close backdrop, final backdrop), and you can easily place the frames in each animation one on top of the other (that's a whole tutorial in itself, lol), and you've got your finished scene. Not only does rendering in layers give you better end quality, it actually takes less time and frustration. I know it sounds like more work, but when one rendered layer animation takes 10 minutes, whereas the whole setup takes an hour, and it's roughly 20 minutes of setup and re-combining, your time is better spent, and your stress levels go down. ;) MS

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