Best codec/compression for AVI

Hi, I’m new on this forum.

I’ve made some patches that generates particle systems, I set up some animations, audio inputs and so on. I “grab” the fullscreen output with Fraps (works great with multiprocessor machines!) and I obtain a 1024*768 (and more) slightly compressed AVI. Lines and colors seems OK… The problem arise when I recompress the video in DV: files are much smaller and can be handed by final cut or AE but i loose quality, expecially when I use thin lines or color gradients.

Are there other kind of compressions to make the final video that gives more fidelity respect to colors and graphics?

Maybe I should use other softwares for compressing from AVI to DV AVI? Actually I have tried with Final Cut and Premiere , result is the same.

Of course I can use not compressed AVIs to project Hi Res videos from a fast machine but I can’t use such large files on slower machine and I can’t make DVDs…

Help is appreciated if you have encountered the same problem…

HI lanvideoource , as far as i heard ,for best resolution use writer nrt which export highquality as single frames into jpg for example then you can join those frames to make the video ,
the only problem will be to record the audio and sinc it later

or try a lossless compressor like e.g. lagarith. the dv codec is just useful for storing dv video tapes, not for motiondesign etc.

tnx but I’ve tried also with writer NRT… the uncompressed AVI is OK but as soon as i compress in DV the quelity gets worst… For the audio I solved the problem recording the FFT as a txt file. The problem is DV compression. I’ll try lagarith and i’ll keep informed about results…

i made good very good experiences with

  • Writer (EX9 Screenshot NRT).v4p by @jannis|jannis)) to be found on ((user:catweasel’s page. advantage of this one is that you also have the renderers antialiasing.
  • JPGVideo to be found on Software Tool Links with encoder
    ** VP70 General Profile. I assume that this one is contained in the Mege Codec Pack. Link is also to be found on Software Tool Links

good quality and really slim files.

try to use quicktime whenever possible
it has many fine codecs suitable for everything
if cpu is a concern then try photo-jpeg codec at
95 percent, no quality loss and fast playback

Hi,
the problem of quality-loss with DV/miniDV is because DV/miniDV is compressed to 4:2:0 (PAL) and 4:1:1 (NTSC) in YUV. That means you have for each 4 pixel information 4 pixel Y (Luminance), 2 pixel (Blue - Red) and 0 pixel V (Red - Yellow). In fact, DV codec reduces your colors by 6 pixels, instead of 4:4:4 uncompressed. Thats why you never ever should use DV or DV-Cam for colorkeying.
So, your problem is probably worse in Red and Yellow? Check this for further explanations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dv#Chroma_subsampling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV

I can recommend HuffYUV as a lossless codec. Its fast and saves storage. But if you want use it with Vvvv be aware of its limitations and the experience I made with it http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php?page=FAQ+Codecs&highlight=huffyuv#HuffYuv

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffyuv

Tnx for all ideas! Yes, my problems with colors are mainly in red and yellow… in general with light colors. I’ll try using HuffYUV for non compressed format and QT Photo-Jpeg or VP70 for compressed material. As I see everyone has is own preferences/strategies!

I’ve tried Lagarith. Great codec, graphic-colors are ok but obviously you need the codec installed to play videos!
Also the FRAPS codec is ok, almost not compressed but the file is much smaller than the AVI not compressed… but the problem is the same, install the fraps codec on all the machine.

Kalle I think I’ll go back to use NRT render because Fraps makes some bad artifact when I use patches with mutiple renders (es. Blur an so on…). It seems that Fraps capture a strange mixture of first and second render. Some results are also visually interesting but I sould want it! Did you encountered the same problem with FRAPS? is there any solution?

Tnx to the vvvvery nice comunity.

ZeNo

the Writer (EX9 Screenshot NRT) i mentioned seems faster than the provided Writer (EX9.Texture NRT). Also you may like to have antialiased render output.
please keep that in mind.

btw i have to revoke what i wrote about VP70 “General Profile”. files are really slim but yet not free from artefacts.
i get pretty good quality results with Ligos Indeo Video 5.11 but pretty large files.
Today i made a ~4 minutes movie, 25 FPS, 1024x768.
VP 70 was around 8 MB,
Ligos was around 300MB…

btw around 10 days ago i successfull rendered 2 Videos (more precise: 2 sets of around 4000 jpgs) simultanous from 2 renderers with the Writer (EX9 Screenshot NRT). Resolution was 1152x576.

both “videos” were supposed to be composed with some stills in different layers by somebody else here at my work.

wonderful: absolute synchronicity. i’m going to upload this video when the related project is finished.
unfortunately i am sworn to secrecy atm.
but i can tell already it is a really rocking complex 3d matrix of CCFLs!!
i can’t wait to publish that video…

Tnx for the suggestion, Kalle, I’ll try with Lingos Indeo. I’m tring to NRT render my patch since I can’t handle multiple renderers with FRAPS. The result of NRT render is really ok and very smooth but I’m having problems with video-FFT synchronization.

I’m using FFTrecorder (recorder) module to record FFT and FFT player while NRT rendering but there is a delay between FFT data and sound. The delay is not constant and gets larger toward the end of recording. It’s a problem of my machine?

I’ve also tried with Sequencer (animation) module. A simple solution. Good timing but the problem is that I can’t understand at what point of the recording it starts reproducing. Is it the real start of the recording? Moreover is impossible to store recorded data, but is possible to find a solution fo this. Does anyone tried to use Sequencer (animation) to record FFT?

Wich is the best strategy to achieve a precise synchronicity when rendering in not real time mode?

Tnx

I reply to myself.

I achieved a good audio/video sinc during NRT rendering using the patch VideoPlayerNRT.
The strategy is to play the audiofile at the speed of the rendering (and analyze sound thru FFT) during the NRT rendering, so you don’t need to record FFT data at all. If you play the audio file using VideoPlayerNRT, audio sounds jerky but when you overdub the original audio on the NRT rendering the result is sinchronized. The only problem is that the audio resolution goes down to 25fps.

I think that is useful to share again this simple module because It’s quite difficult to find it in the forum. Tnx to the creator, nice idea…

Here is an extract of one om my last experiments with NRT rendering

VideoPlayerNRT.v4p (11.4 kB)

I’ll throw in my 2 pennyworth too!
I use png files to render out from the NRT which keeps the files small and means no compression artifacts until rendering to an avi, gives pristeen results!