Attached Link: Come over and visit my (old, dated) live action show.

I have started production on a local public access show. I am planning to fill it with Animation from my computer using flash 5 and a 16 MB Rage Fury Pro card with video in/out. I have done some test videos with various settings, but my video doesnt look as "sharp" as I would have hoped. I was wondering if anybody has attempted this and can share some tecniques. I have tried thicker lines, various frame rates, and such. Looks ok, but I plan to advance to "Leased access" and make some money with it. And I would want better quality video. I also would want to invite local artists and bands. Make it a whole community thing. Thanks

Having output a 30 second intro animation in Bryce for a local indie music show a few years back, I feel your pain. The animation tends to look "cheap" on the tv screen and great on the PC. Since it was a local cable access show, they weren't too worried about it. But if you're wanting to do serious graphics and turn it into a business, I would suggest a much higher end video card. Have you tried 24 (or, more accurately, 23.97) frames per second? That's film speed, and will help some when going to TV. But, being video, it's naturally "brighter" than film, and unless your video app has filters to simulate the look, it will remain bright. Kinda like Technicolor was. Which also brings up: what video editing software are you using? Are you on a Mac or PC? I can speak for the Mac platform on video cards - the NVIDIA GeForce 3 with 64MB SDRAM will do the job if you have or are considering purchasing a Power Mac G4. I'm researching the Windows options for one of my movie projects, and I'll let you know what I find out, since that project is going to TV as well. Well, hope my little byte of info helps some. Oh, and when you need band videos, let me know - I'm in a rock band... ;) -silver

Attached Link: http://go.to/outcrowd

Thanks for the reply. I am using a PC (sadly), and I have tried both 15 and 24 frames per second. Both look fine, actually, since the animation is not too complicated--yet. I had a problem with flash, actually. I am using flash to make the cartoons, and then just playing them full screen to a vcr i have. Like you said, the video is a little washed out. I did try making the flash into a quicktime and importing it to Premire, but i had problems with the sound, which doesnt really import to an audio track to QT. Also, playing flash full screen is so sharp! i tried a couple of test renders with premire and the quality just cannot compare! but it does look washed out. maybe tweaking some settings on qt....? I also found a color scheme with TV safe colors...which i havent used, yet....(???) but the next cartoon will use them. I need around 80 minutes of video footage in order to secure a time slot , and so far i have around 3 minutes done! So if you (or anyone else) has stuff that you wouldnt mind a whole city watching (theoretically) please, give me a email at lonebannana@hotmail.com . Band videos would be sweet, too, silver. thanks again for the post

lonebannana: Could you perhaps post a link to the "TV safe colors" that you mentioned? I've got a long-term project using Bryce, Poser, Mimic, Susanna, Natural Pose, Terragen, RayDream Studio, etc. to produce a video on VCD, based on a childrens' book I wrote over 20 years ago. I've been told the Rage Fury drops frames on output. I've also been advised that in order to get pro quality tapes I need a Targa board for output, and a professional vcr. THAT'S WHY i'M GOING TO vcd. As to the washout: sounds like a gamma correction problem. I know of the problem, but don't have a solution yet for rendering good-looking computer output to TV. There must be a formula for accomplishing this task--too many people are doing this for there not to be! But I haven't found it yet. Also, I've heard that with the new version of MPEG 4 compression, called DivX, one can get almost DVD quality playback. A near-DVD quality, full-length video can be crammed onto one CD-R! Problem now: no hardware playback device for this codec. You have to use your computer (with software codec)--which puts you back to the problem of outputting to TV. Anyway, I'm looking into this DivX also. Keep us all updated on your progress. Sounds like an interesting project.

Attached Link: http://go.to/outcrowd

i actually got it off of a really good book i bought: "Flash 5 Cartooning". it is on their cd. I will see about making a copy(i don't think it would be a problem, since it is just a general color pallet). but i dont know if it is a flash-specific color pallet (never messing with these things before) it is called "Video Safe.clr". dont know if that is helpful. Mainly, it says to avoid saturated colors (red=RGB 255,255,255 ) also it suggests not using pure black or white, but to use: black=RGB 16,16,16 white=RGB 235,235,235 if you have a problem with me sending the pallet, or if the pallet is useless to you, those values may help. i dont know if this thing shows my email acct, either, so it is lonebannana@hotmail.com. i have some flash animations already made. when i post them to my site, i will tell everyone. Lonebannana

i have also been thinking about Scan converters. I wonder if there are any brands out there that can convert in a good quality. If anyone knows of a brand of scan converters, or even video output cards that would work, please post them lonebannana

Apparently you got the material, but the TV output is not good, I tried the Matrox 400 with dualheads, the signal is the best against cards like 3DFX Voodoo 3500TV, Asus 7700GTS with TV output, and others. The Matrox 400 was the best in the section under 400$ but i was not satisfied and tried the Matrox RT2000 with a PC homemade machine with doble 800 mhz processors, 2 scssi HD of 10.000 rpm and a lot of memory, and the results are good enough for TV. Sadly you cant compromise with the equipment... another option is to made the output in a studio and pay for it, only for start and to have the best product. :-) Fran

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

I made also that self using flash 5 and a 16 MB Voodoo AGP 3dfx 3500TV graphic card on PC windows 2000 with TV video card Pinacle. video in/out in RBG system and it not change my flash animations or colors, I used true colors , sometimes I record direct to the videorecorder using full screan video/out and adio/out , you must see my latest simply animation on a 16:9 TV!! 1000 x better that on my 19'in monitor. BTW I work not long with Flash but Poser4 Pro pack help me much with my flash work.