Smallest file size for animations?

hrpschrd

The manual has lots of information about the different redering and outputs and how the quality is effected. I am still making files that are too big to email (>6MB).

Can anyone tell me which settings will give the smallest possible file size for animations? (Carrara8.5Pro)

Thanks in advance.

mikael-aronsson

Animations don't take much space, it's texture maps (if you have them in the .car file) and geometry, the animation itself is not a memory hog in any way, there is not so much you can do about it unless you remove keys or NLA clips.

If you save the .car file uncompressed you can zip them to get down the file size.

I assumed that you talk about the .car files, but maybe you talk about the final animation file ? if that's the problem the best thing is to try different settings to get smaller files, most modern codecs are pretty good at keeping the size small and there is not so much you can do about it, they don't save complete frames anyway, they do that at intervals the rest is partial frames and they are compressed up to the neck, what are you using at the moment ?

If you create the animation from inside Carrara it's not that much you can do, you have the AVI options to play with, I suggest you render out to images and use some other tool to create the final animation, try VirtualDub

You could also try ffmpeg

Good free choices, otherwise there are lots of tools to create animations if you want to spend some money on it.

H.264 (MPEG4) is one of the best universal formats to use and have very good compression, WMV (ASF) is not bad either but a little more limited, OGG is one alternative but H.264 often gives better result.

 

Dartanbeck

For making smaller file size in video output, like ai and/or animated gif, for example, the overall dimensions make all the difference. So you'll need to render a few times at various resolutions to experiment with the final size of the file. Codec compression for videos help as well as far as video files are concerned, but for gif, it's all in the number of pixels.

Oh, and the number of frames also plays a big role. For simple gif files, or even quick videos to share, try running at less frames per second to generate less frames to save in the end.

evilproducer

I think the OP is talking about the video compression for sharing video files rendered in Carrara.

@hrpschrd: It would also help to know what computer platform you are using, what options you have for CODECs when you set up your render settings, what frame rate...

As you can see, there are a lot of variables. Probably the most important is the CODECs you have available to you. CODEC is kind of an acronym for COmpression/DECompression. In layman's terms, CODECs are ways to compress the video files. Like image compression, there are two types, lossy compression and lossless compression.

Lossy compression will be smaller because it will throw out data in favor of a smaller file size. The type of data that is discarded depends on the compression scheme. Some CODECs discard color information for example. They also usually have ways to adjust the amount of data that is discarded. Higher settings will give a better picture, but increase file sizes.

There are other compression schemes that use other methods, such as sampling areas of the image, frame-to-frame and not changing areas that have the same color or are black. You can see this effect as a smeary area in some poorly compressed youtube videos.

If you have it, I would suggest h.264 or mpeg4. They are a lossy CODEC, but they work well, and you can use a single pass or dual pass for better quality.

You could also get a dropbox account and stick the video in your public folder and send a link to the video via e-mail. As I recall, if someone doesn't have the link to the file, they can't see it. It's a great way to let someone view a larger sized file without risking it hitting some file size limit with an e-mail server.

Dartanbeck

It sounded like final file size was paramount to me. One thing that I've noticed fairly early on, making animated video clips, is that 1080p makes for much, Much larger final file size than 720p, and for sharing simple examples, it was fine to cut that down even a lot further. Like for adding an animated gif to a forum, if I tried rendering at 720p the file would be too large to post. So for simple animated gif examples like the one above, I'd completely change the aspect ratio in Carrara to only show what I want to show, and then get the resolution as small as I could without getting too overly pixelated.

WendyLuvsCatz

always render to image series then compress with an external program is the easiest ast you can try different formats

I use uncompressed in virtualdub then Windows live moviemaker for youtube

Hitfilm and mp4 for other things

evilproducer

Dartanbeck said:

It sounded like final file size was paramount to me. One thing that I've noticed fairly early on, making animated video clips, is that 1080p makes for much, Much larger final file size than 720p, and for sharing simple examples, it was fine to cut that down even a lot further. Like for adding an animated gif to a forum, if I tried rendering at 720p the file would be too large to post. So for simple animated gif examples like the one above, I'd completely change the aspect ratio in Carrara to only show what I want to show, and then get the resolution as small as I could without getting too overly pixelated.

We cross posted.

Frame size and frame rate can play a huge role in the overall file size of the video, but the CODEC can be even more important. I've had movies at 640x480 at 30 fps and 20 seconds long that were 60MBs in size or greater using one compression scheme, then if it was encoded using (as an example) h.264 had it come in at 10MB or less, with only a very slight loss in quality. Same size, same frame rate, same length

evilproducer

JaguarElla said:

always render to image series then compress with an external program is the easiest ast you can try different formats

I use uncompressed in virtualdub then Windows live moviemaker for youtube

Hitfilm and mp4 for other things

I agree Wendy!

Compression shouldn't be done at the render time, unless it is a lossless scheme. If you edit a compressed movie, the edit software itself may have a preferred format, such as DVCPro or h.264 and may convert it, which could cause trans-encoding artifacts. It is always best to encode the video for the specific platform it will be viewed on, and at the best settings you can get away with.

Milo

1. are you talkig about the renders to email? or the source files the .car files

2. if they are renders, what length of animation and what render size are we dealing with.  I sometimes use a post application to do the video compression that seems to be fairly effecient.  It will depend on what its being used for on the other size, by who you are sending it too.

hrpschrd

Thanks everybody. Really helpful Forum.

I am using a PC and, as guessed, trying to produce small enough animation rendered files. There are many variables and I was hoping someone had already done the heavy lifting. I have tried a number of combinations but the largest effect on file size usually produces unuseful results because the movement is either jerky or not obviously movement.

I will keep trying variables. By the way, can Apple users see avi or animated gif files or just QuickTime files?

hrpschrd

Actually, I think I am going to take evilproducers's advice to use DropBox for full sized files. That way I don't have to compromise the quality and most people can handle large files they retrieve.

Thanks all!

PhilW

I found that MP4 generally gives much smaller files without too many artifacts. I was using it not long ago for 1080p (that's 1920x1080) resolution animations at 24fps.  They are 5-10 times smaller than AVI files with the same content. As others have suggested, I render to uncompressed frames and then compile the animation from that which gives flexibility for the animation formats.