Hello. General newbie, but wha ev. So far I've made 2 ventures for video compression within Poser 4. Two with the divx codec emplyoed, and one with no compression whatsoever. The size of the divx file is impressive (a measly 200kb), while the uncompressed video is 250mb. Thing is, they both took approximately the same time to render. Another problem is that I'm unable to play back the uncompressed video without EXTREMELY stuttery frame rates (less tha 10fps). What I'm looking for is a good quality video compressor that doesn't have to look absolutely perfect (yet not nearly as bad as divx), and is suitable to transfer to a DV tape. There are so many codec with so many options, that I don't know where to begin. Anyone have any ideas? Also, what's an ideal resolution for rendering the animation which will make the transfer from Computer--->Dv--->VHS?? I figure 640x480 is decent enough. Im running a modest system here. 380mhz, voodoo3, 128ram, win98. Many thanks to all thos e who give their assistance. Ry

Do to your system speed it will take a bit to render. No matter what codec you uses. Anyway, here is what I do. I render a vidio uncompressed. im an mpg fan so I bought a version of honestech mpeg encoder. It has many compresion options on both mpeg1 and 2 formats, Witch will give you the capeability to record to VHS useing NTCS compresion. that is what most U.S. TV's use. they have a demo version you can try. Its a cheep program for what it does. I think it would work for you in every aspect you seek. all but the speed of rendering. 640x480 is great for vidio to tv. remember just because it looks like crap on your system doesn't mean it will on tv. TV is low resilution and it make vidios look great. hope you have fun :)

Actually, NTSC is closer to 320 X 240 in resolution. Try a test render that way (it takes 1/4 the time). The general rule is that the better codecs (compression - decompression algorithims) are assymmetrical: they take longer to compress than decompress. Your video system should have a number of algorithms built in. I tend to use Quicktime, which has lots of them. You just have to take a short clip (about 10 seconds works pretty well), and try a number of them to see what works best for your type of project. - JimX

The best codec depends on your source material. But I also use a method mentioned here: Render uncompressed (takes the same amount of time) and THEN work on compression, try several settings, etc. Even slow codecs are faster than rendering it again! For a Poser animation I made, my experiments gave me confidence in Sorensen compression. It can be viewed with Quicktime on both Mac and Windows.

Attached Link: http://www.radgametools.com/

All the suggestions are being taken to heart. Thanks to all who took the time to reply. I tried the Honestech mpeg encoder. Maybe I just haven't figured it out properly, but I preffered the quality of divx to mpeg2. Thanks though. Its a damn fast encoder. I'll be working with it more just to make sure I didn't miss anything. I havent tried Bink, but I will tonight. As it stands, I did a quick render while I was at work, using divx. I set the quality really high, and used a very high kbps , and it looks pretty decent. I'm not going for that perfect cgi animated look (though I'm sure I will on latter projects). I'm kinda shooting for an average quality actually. Still, it's good to get a hang for everything. Thanks again everyone. ry

If you are going to output to DV tape (and I'll assume you have the means to do so) you probably ought to be using a DV codec and be working at full screen (576 x 768 for PAL, and there's extra complication of non square pixels...). This leads to fairly big files (5mins = 1GB approx) and you'll probably only get playback on a computer at full res with a high end system . BUT I've output poser animations to DV tape and they look great. If you are going to do further effects work on the footage think about no compression or a lossless compression scheme and only compress the final product. A really good place for all things video compression related is http://www.icanstream.tv/CodecCentral/index.html Which tells you most of what you could need to know about compression and codecs. They're the makers of Media 100 and Media Cleaner Pro. There should be a PDF file on how to make great quicktime movies thats well worth a read regardless of what system you go with.