I want to render a short animation and put on my home video. I am using iMovie to edit my video from a consumer Sony Digital video camera. Can someone tell me the specs on rendering? Specifically I need resolution, frame rate and most importantly, what format the animation should be. Also, do I need any additional programs?

I'm not sure if I can help because I've only done this sort of thing on my PC. Using C2.1, I render a 648x480 30fps uncompressed .avi and it imports into Adobe Premiere fine. From there I can export it to my camera or whatever, just like a regular video.

If you really want to get picky about rendering for video... (I only say that because I have to follow these rules every day ;-) Here's the specs: Render size: 720 x 480 (That's standard DV for NTSC output) Compression: Quicktime/DV-NTSC Quality: Best 30 frames per second Hope that helps! Chuck

Although Eagle2358 may have something there with 648 x 480 which I didn't consider earlier. The aspect ratio for video is 4x3... which is what 648 x 480 is roughly. What I normally do is render at 720 x 534, then resize the rendered movie to 720 x 480 in After Effects or Premiere. This corrects the stretching (circles look like ovals and squares are not perfectly square) that occurs when sending a square pixel image into a non-square pixel environment... IE: Video. I believe Carrara works with square pixels, but I am not 100% sure. It's getting late and I am lacking in sleep but will investigate this a bit more... anyone else care to comment?

You are correct chuckeril. C renders in square pixels, and should be re-sized to fit the aspect ratio of dv, i.e. 720x480.

I have found that dropping in a 720x534 animation file gets re-sized automatically inside Final Cut Pro, which is what I use to composite and finalize my images.

However, I disagree about the compressor to use. Even if you drop a DV-NTSC compressed file into a DV-NTSC project, the file will have end up having de/re-compression artifacts, and as such I prefer to use sequenced TIFF images. They will stay full quality until final output when the compressor renders to 5:1 DV compression.

Also, using sequenced TIFF images allows for using G-buffer channels that can allow for more flexability in the final composite. It ends up taking more hard drive space while I'm working on a prjoect, but I can always archive the project when I'm done to CD and free up the space again.

And to make things more confusing here's my advice : ) If you are using iMovie to edit Render to 720 x 480 (like chuckerii said) which is the miniDV format standard 30 fps. No compression (huge file) Then to have iMovie recognize the file you have to open it in the Quicktime Player and export as a DV stream. Then put it in the media folder (of your iMovie project). When you launch iMovie it will tell you that's there's a strange file in your media folder but it will put it in your bin so you can use it. Good luck.

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

Now a question for me. chuckerii, bluetone: Have you used Carrara's Field rendering option: Even, Odd or do you just leave it untoched? Robert: (from reading bluetone's post got me thinking) I'm not sure if iMovie is smart as Final Cut and will automatically resize a 720x534 to 720x480.... Maybe you should do a test with this two sizes and see which one is the correct one for iMovie. _____ And another note: Bluetone: you say you prefer sequenced TIFF files, why not PSD files (just wondering) And now that's the patch is out you can render to Quicktime (million of color +)with no compression (to preserve quality) and use the alpha channel information. I tried it and it works. What do you think? You also use Carrara for professional video work like chuckerii?

velarde: I haven't had much luck with Field Rendering for use with video, but I'm no expert on it. Frame Rendering seems to work much better. I think it all depends on what you are outputing your animation to and what type of compression you are using. In my experience, Field Rendering causes a lot of distortion lines, especially with an animation that has a lot of fast movement. When I have used Field Rendering, it is usually odd frame first though. But, 99% of my editors prefer Frame Rendering for Avid or After Effects. BTW, when I render for video production (IE: News Open) I use Quicktime/Animation Compression/Millions of Colors/Best Quality/30fps. We are not using DV format with our editing system at work yet (hopefully soon)... but at home for freelance, I use DV format.

I have noticed that you all havent mentioned anything about motion blur. In the experiments I'm currently doing, I find that if I don't motion blur the images..they look computer generated on video..but if I motion blur them, they mix almost perfectly. 720 x 480 uncompressed images (pick your type..depends on if you need the extra things from a tiff or not) If you plan to resize the video to desktop size (320 by 240), you can render at the larger size and use jpg sequences very nicely..and it saves disk space. the current test I have running is pretty damn cool (even if I did do it..lol) and its using the 720 x 480 jpg sequence with motion blur, standard lighting and backdrop/background animations. Ya really need a video editor tho..a decent one. Premiere does pretty well. and the advantages of using an post editor is the ability to composite in layers to make things interact in 3 dimensions even tho the dv from the camera is 2d. Very cool effects by using transparecies and layers. my .02 :) BT

Velarde- I had bad luck trying to output to psd. Sometimes Photoshop would recognize it, sometimes it wouldn't, and it rarely recognized the extra layers. I don't know why, but tif always worked. I went with what worked. ;> I also output to QT/Animation/million+/30fps when I'm not trying to composite with live video and that usually works just fine. As far as field rendering, I did try to field render once, and I got the same distortion lines that chuckeril mentioned. I believe that it's a problem of field priority, but once a frame rendered project is dropped into the time line of FCP it gets rendered to the projects compressor settings, and FCP creates the appropriate fields for output to tape. It's never been a problem. I haven't tried the latest version of the support for QT/No compression/alpha channel that 2.1 gives, since I've got a system that works! Maybe I'll give a try next time I'm between projects. :>

The following is for NTSC -- the US standard for television. 640 x 480 is square pixel standard. 720 x 480 is rectangualr consumer DV (Digital 8, Mini-DV) 720 x 486 (I think it's 486) is DV-CAM or the Professional DV. NTSC runs at 29.97 frames per second. If you're using Premiere, none of this is relavent. Render your file at 640 x 480 at 30fps and Premiere will auto stretch and convert the frame rate for you, no problem. Or, if you'd rather avoid the huge files of uncompressed animation (but sacrifice the uncompressed clarity if you're going to do composite work later), render at 720 x 480 and use your on-board DV compression; I use the Sony DV codec on my Sony VAIO. Carrara will automatically use the compression and will generate non-square pixels. So, if what I create in Carrara (or RDS) is going to be used AS IS in a premiere project, I just render it out for the DV codec. If I'm going to manipulate the image in After Effects or any other package, I render at 640 x 480 uncompressed. Hope that's helpful. - Dex