Render to an image sequence, then in a video editor, sequence the images into a movie. This has several advantages: (a) you can see the images before they get compressed by the video codec, to decide if it's the codec or the Bryce scene file that's the culprit (b) If you get interrupted while rendering a movie (power outage, out of memory, whatever), then you lose all the progress. Bryce doesn't save partial movie files. If you get interrupted while rendering to an image sequence, however, you only lose the current frame, and can re-render starting at that frame. (c) after the first few frames render, you can open them up and check for little details like lighting, etc. If you don't like it, you can abort the render then. With a movie you have to wait for the whole thing to render before you decide "gee, I think that bouncy ball would look better in green". --flick