animation compressor

captaingeek

Hi, which animation compressor do you recommend? Lots of choices, not sure which one to choose. Raw avi's are very big!

Oroboros

Better to be big an uncompressed to start. Always choose AVI for Windows or Animation for Mac.

I use MPEG Streamclip from Squared5.

http://www.squared5.com

Mac version's very robust, lots of settings, very good output, ability to tailor presets.

cdordoni

VP6 can work pretty well. On2, the original developer is gone, but you can get it here:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/VP6.htm

EDIT: That VP6 link appears to be a decompressor only. I just installed it and it does not show up as an output option

VP6 is also built into WildForm's Flix utilities for converting various video formats to Flash:
http://www.wildform.com/products/flix/

dwsel

I'm using:
- rendering to frames combined using VirtualDub (better render several frames than rerender the whole animation when something goes wrong or you just want to stop the rendering in the middle)
- lossless codec like Lagarith http://www.alienwarearena.com/articles/view/useful-lossless-codecs/#lagarith or HuffYUV http://www.alienwarearena.com/articles/view/useful-lossless-codecs/#ffv11 if you want to edit the animation later
- x264 if you want to put the file on YT or Vimeo http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264gui/
- Xvid http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.html if you want to open your animation everywhere (standalone, mobile, older systems etc.)