I have done a few 3 to 5 second animations for poser, but now I am moving up to longer animations. What is the best format for rendering the animation, AVI, Quick Time, individual frames, etc. I have heard that rendering individual frames is my best choice, cause I can then put them together in an editing program and add sound, and then convert it into any movie format that I wish to. Is this true???. I want real high quality output for the animations.

Rendering individual frames works if you want to add post-production effects (like lightning bolts) in PhotoShop or other paint programs. Its possible to add sound directly in Poser. Thats the best (only?) way to do lip synching. I haven't tried to combine movies done with sound added in Poser with sound files added in Premiere so I don't know if there would be a problem. When you make a movie directly in Poser you have options for different compressions along with formats like AVI or Quicktime. When I make a final movie in Poser I use Cinepak compression. For longer animations that have different camera angles or closeups I create an individual movie for each change of view. I usually render an uncompressed movie and import it into Premiere to make my final animation. This is also when I add titles. When I use a PC I make AVIs. On my Mac I use Quicktime. I don't know if there is any quality difference. I'm not an expert but I hope this helps

Chris at posamation told me about a free program called Bink Compressor. You can get it www.radgametools.com. I compressed a 4 second 800x600 Avi (aprox 114MB) down to - Get this... 980KB!!!! That's about 115 to 1 Compression rate. There is virtually no quality lost. The program can convert most files and do it in reverse as well. It can also incorporate MP3's for sound. There are limitations: to watch a "Binked" video, you need the program on your Computer (download is Approx. 1MB) and having sound (or keeping the sound quality high) reduces the compression rate as well. On the upside, you can convert a Binked File to an .EXE which can run on any computer, even if it doesn't have the compressor. The down side of that format is that it can't be converted to a usable file once it's an .EXE file. It's a good tool to share your animations with others, but not for working with video. I hope this helps.

The problem with Bink is that it ignores 2 platforms that are known for their media prowess: MacOS and BeOS. Users of those platforms cannot view Bink files. Considering the number of professionals using macs for animation and video editing, that is a MAJOR drawback. And, considering the unbelieveable speed and accuracy of Be in media production, that's too bad, too. For best cross-platform ability, you should use Quicktime or AVI. Quicktime has a codec called Sorenson that has unbelievable quality at moderate compression settings. And it's free. Available for Windows 95/98/NT and Mac. (unfortunately, not for Be) http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ -sk