Hello! This is my first post, but I've been lurking here for a few weeks while I've been making my first steps with poser animation.

I wanted to wait until I could post my first video until posting, but I saw your question, and I have learnt such a lot here in the last few weeks, I really want to give back, and I just can't keep quiet...

I disagree with Mike 100%.

The "Preview" is just that, a prieview, the quality is awful, it's fine for sorting your scene out, but unless you want a kind of "toon" aesthetic, it's useless for renders.

Using Firefly, a typical seven second scene will render overnight (well, in about twelve hours as long as I'm not using any smoke haha!).

Yes, you have to make trade offs between render quality and render time, you have to find that for yourself.

And yes, single frames into png's (lossless)... and you can import a frame sequence into any decent video editing software. Mike's suggestion of virtualdub is an excellent freeware solution.

I don't like his Adobe Premiere idea at all though. It's just my personal opinion, but I think it's overpriced trash. Try any flavour of Sony Vegas, it's really cool (PC only) software, that was once written by a cool US company until Sony bought them, easy to learn and absolute professional quality. And yes, it imports a frame sequence.

I must apologise for a first post that sounds so "know it all", but I couldn't shut up. Hopefully my first animation short will be finished in a day or two so I can back my wild claims up somewhat.

Oh, and weight mapping... I agree with Mike...  (I have absolutely no idea!).

My compliments,

TheCaptain.