User Guide

CHAPTER 12
372
Rendering a Movie
Cinepak Use when compressing 16-bit and 24-bit video for playback from CD or for
desktop presentations. For best results, use the Cinepak compressor on raw source data that
has not been previously compressed with a highly lossy compressor. Note that this is a slow
compression method. With Cinepak, decompression is much faster than compression, and
the data rate for playback can be defined by the user. However, you cannot save an alpha
channel using the Cinepak compressor.
Microsoft RLE Use for lossless compression limited to 256 colors.
Microsoft DV Use for digital video camcorders.
Intel Indeo/Microsoft Video Use when compressing video for playback from CD.
Full Frames (Uncompressed) Use for a depth setting of Millions of Colors+ when an alpha
channel is required.
To specify Video for Windows compression settings:
1 In the Render Queue window, click the underlined name of the output module.
2 Choose Video for Windows from the Format menu.
3 Click Format Options in the Video Output section.
4 In the Video Compression dialog box, choose a compressor from the first menu in the
Compressor section.
5 Select a Compression Quality level.
6 If you selected either Cinepak or Microsoft Video in step 4, click the Configure button
to set other options:
• For Cinepak, choose whether the movie is compressed to color or to black and white.
• For Microsoft Video, choose a level for the temporal compression quality of the movie.
Temporal compression compresses a movie by comparing successive frames and keeping
only changed data. High temporal quality maintains smoothness of motion. Lower
temporal quality tends to produce jerkiness of motion because a pixel doesn’t change
unless the difference between frames is great.
UG.book Page 372 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM