If you are doing animation for anything more than the proverbial shits and giggles, then the safest, most flexible way is to do uncompressed frame rendering. Once you have the frames, yes, you -will- have to learn how to use some form of video editing software. However, you can start with something as simple as Quicktime Pro. And a quick google will reveal several freeware video editors. The benefit is simple; you can run the frames through the editor, compress them with one codec....and if you don't like the result, simply reload and use another codec. And frames make it easier to do postwork. Say you do a scene on a starship bridge with pre-purchased set pieces. You take a frame into Photoshop (or PSP, or any of the shareware or freeware photo editors that support layers and transparencies), make a mask to remove the display graphics, invert that mask as a template, create new displays (and animate those), then batch process the lot and superimpose the images in the correct sequence. Animated console readouts in exactly the same way the pros do it. A bit tedious, but the result can change an animation. Codecs behave best when they are fed uncompressed audio and video streams; remember that any compression algorithm has a mathematical pattern to it. And that pattern being interfered with by another pattern leads to artifacts of the worst kind. And the only solution there is to start over with a different compression pattern. You only want to compress things =once= (I use Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. Mainly because I got into them cheaply, and have been upgrading every other iteration or so. These are -not- the only ones out there by any stretch. And any app has weaknesses and strengths). If you intend audio, decide exactly what kind right from the start. If just speech, then a semi-decent mike plugged into the computer can suffice.... Just remember that quality is paid for. The better the mike, the better the sound. Always record in raw .wav format with no compression. It takes space, but you don't run into distortion issues when you compress already compress audio. If you intend musical scoring and/or sound effects, then an audio editor is a must. Most of them will display a video stream (even frames) so you can synch your sounds to the images. There are freeware multi-channel audio editors (I use Adobe Audition, simply because it works so well, and integrates with my other editors).