aniMate .avi won't play...

RenderPretender

Anyone else ever had an aniMate .avi not want to play in any media player at all? I'm getting errors, but they're unspecified, so I don;t know where to look. Maybe a codec or compression issue? I'm just experimenting with aniMate in DAZ 4.6, and the render completes, but the .avi will not play in anything. I can't honestly recall how I responded to the compression prompt at the render completion. Any help welcome.

Thanks

RenderPretender

Got it to play in Media Player (it's only a few seconds of test video, btw) with the Microsoft Video 1 codec compression, but even at the highest quality setting in 3Delight the quality was horrible... pixelated and utterly unusable. Again, any assistance welcome.

JimmyC_2009

I don't do animations, but anyone who does, appears to rendere as a still image sequence, and then put it all together in a video editing package. It is a much better way to do it than saving as AVI.

RenderPretender

Thanks, Jimmy... I just tried that, and it seems to work, though it seems to be an art in itself (I'm using Magix), such as trying to determine frame rates and get the app to do it. I have not messed with this before, so if I'm going to pursue it, it's clear that I'll need a LOT of help. I have no idea how to regulate speed/frame rates in Magix or the like.

The biggest problem is render times. All else aside, might take me a lifetime to get 5 or 10 minutes of video.

Thank you!

Tjeb

It is indeed common practice to render as an 'Image Series'.
Here are some suggestions:
- render the image sequence to .png
- use VirtualDub (free) to make an .avi from the image sequence.
- for a short test you can render to an AVI, the codec I use Microsoft Video 1 never gives problems in Mediaplayer.
- to save render time: don't use a background with props, (especially when testing)
later, use the green-screen feature (I also use Magix) to change the background to whatever image you found for example on Google Images.

RenderPretender

Thanks for replying, tjeb, as well as for your suggestions. Before you posted, I tried your suggestion, but with jpeg, With just the character and a vehicle - nothing else - I waited for about 20 minutes for an image chain that would amount to about a second of video. I think I had "champagne taste on a beer purse" in wanting to do a five-ish minute video intro to a narrative in which a character drives into a snowy landscape and has car trouble. The car and character would have to interact with the environment, so a mere background image is out of the question. I think I might have to scratch this whole animation idea... it just doesn't seem practical (for me) at all. Rats.

Tjeb

( I keep it short, my Logitech keyboard just died after four years in use; I now use the on-screen thing and the pen of my tablet.)

about 1 minute render time for 1 frame...?
Are your render settings not to high?

RenderPretender

Thank you once again, especially with your keyboard challenge.

Incidentally, I have 4GB RAM and an Intel Pentium B970 2.30GHz processor, 64-bit.

Trying your settings... I think there may be a very small difference. Rendering at night might be one option... the other being buying a more powerful computer, which does not seem very practical. I'm just not sure what a reasonable render time is. And remember, this is with just a car and character... nothing else.

Oh, and when you turn things off in the Scene Tab, so they still get calculated even though they're off?