Quote - I totally agree:  as long as you work with the video you should use uncompressed or at the least use a codec that is not lossy. (and I'm at a loss to recommend one - pun intended).

I have really good luck with the Lagarith compressor, which comes in both 32 and 64 bit formats. The software is free (donation ware) and can be found at http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html. It's lossless, and can do both 24 bit and 24 with an alpha channel. I use Lagarith for any render I make that isn't a series of stills.

Not sure if that goes to the original problem, though. When I was still on XP (32 bit, however), I had some luck with XVid, but I haven't used it in a long time. It also has the advantage of being free.

I have DivX, but I only use it for playback on my 32 bit (Vista) machine, and not too often at that.

Observation?

You mean, they don't just look fun, but they do tricks, too?

Kewl!!!!!!

:lol:

I've noticed that a lot of, erm... well, "issues" have been aired here in the ol' CC lately, and I thought it was important to note that the admins and techs and behind the scenes elves have continued to come through this year, and R'osity is still my favorite hangout on the Interwebz.

Happy Thanksgiving to all the folks who so celebrate, and a belated Happy to all our Canadian brethren who, as we know, celebrate a bit early.

:biggrin:

S'what I get for not paying close enough attention to my e-mail notifications and getting here in time... I miss all the good pink meat.

Er-- I mean, well... you know what I mean.

:biggrin:

Quote - Lets keep it civil people...

Sorry, Miss Jumps... I reset my hot button and installed a slightly longer fuse, which should take care of it.

I'll be nice, promise.

As an American myself who's bothered to actually read the various Supreme Court rulings on interpretation of freedom of speech, I would say that it would be a very bad idea for any "American company" to participate in or even endorse such an inflammatory, immature, rude, and insensitive concept.

Of course, if you're just making a bad joke, please, do carry on. I guess.

Hear, hear. Well said.

Maybe we could have a flag that shows only nudity... that way all I'd have to do would be t--

Wait, I just got a popup window. I've already got lots of sites like that. Carry on, then.

:lol:

Yay for programmers! Programmers are the best! All love to the techies of the world! Saving the day is what they're best at! Hugs and free beer & saki for all the geek-types that keep the machinery running and protect us all from the nefarious ne'er-do-wells of the dark places! Hoorah!

Hmm? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am in software development. Thank you for noticing.

Particle illusion has a built in limit of rendering to the largest screen size you can display (allowing for the menu bar) but there's a companion program that ships with it that can render separately at most any size, including 1920x1080. It only supports square pixels, but if you're using strict HD at 24 fps progressive, your pixels should be square in your rendering anyway. You can import footage to use as a reference, but I find that it works better if your reference footage is lower resolution. Once you've got the particles looking good, you can get rid of the background and composite separately (I use After Effects for that).

PI can render to file formats that support transparent backgrounds, and the newest versions can render to video formats that support it (such as AVI with the Lagarith codec). For clips of under ten seconds I usually render to AVI; if longer I usually render to PNG.

Those features are for the full package (version 3). The light, or SE package (version 2) has more limitations, and I haven't used it.

PI can also import position data from an external program, if you have it. For example, it's able to import position data from SynthEyes, and I once wrote a simple script (with some help on the math) for exporting position data from POV-Ray.

Generally, PI will work well for particle effects where the camera doesn't change rotation or zoom significantly. If you use a compisitong program you might be able to put the particle effects on a 3D layer and move it, but that might be problematic. Or, if Daz Studio supports it (I'm not familiar with it) you might be able to render a particle effect as a movie, then texture the movie onto a plane that always faces the camera.

PI comes with lots of particle emitters, and usually there are a new new free ones every month (there's been new releases of versions for use inside After Effects, and that's slowed down the delivery of free goodies a bit).

A really good resource for particle illusion is the forum at Creative Cow (free registration to post; click on "formums" and the link to the PI forum is on the right side about halfway down). Alan Lorence, the developer and driving force of PI, frequently steps in there to answer questions about the product directly, and there are other helpful folks there, too. Some nice tutorials there, too.

My corporate overlords had me working all weekend, and I missed the first episode when it aired here. I'll be away from civilization (well, no cable TV anyway) this coming weekend, so I guess I'll mess the next one too.

:sad:

Hopefully, my cable company will put it in rotation in their "on demand" area soon, and I can catch it then. Wish BBC America did on-line reruns...

I could move like that... exactly once. Then I'd need some nice, beefy EMT folks to lift me onto a stretcher and cart my aged carcass to a well-trained orthopaedist to unbend my sad, pretzel-like form.

Which could be a problem for the honeymoon, so I'd better not chance it.

:biggrin:

Excellent!

:biggrin: :lol: :biggrin:

I seem to recall most doctors got off to a bit of a rocky start, though... I was sure I wasn't going to like Peter Davison at first, having gotten so attached to Tom Baker. After a while, though, I think he was my favorite until David Tennant.

The Doctor, James Bond, Superman... in the end, I don't much mind who's acting and who's writing for 'em, I just love the concept.

Plus, I really, really, really wanna go on a TARDIS ride.