LOL - thanks you for introducing me to Lagarith, I'm sure it will be coming in handy soon.

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Hey, thanks for the quantitative shootout! :)

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

I wasn't aware of Lagarith, thanks for the info. I just rendered Scene 1 of Episode IV of Cube Space which is exactly 50 seconds in length using Lagarith , Xvid and Full Uncompressed.

Difference in render times were negligible. File sizes are
Full Uncompressed - 2.11 Gig
Lagarith - 1.73 Gig
Xvid - 58.6 Meg

For the non-professional comedy projects I'm posting on YouTube, Xvid still meets my needs for step one. However, I am glad I now have Lararith as an alternative to Full Uncompressed for projects requiring more professional quality, post iClone editing.

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Sure in utopia nothing would ever be compressed and we would all be rich. Telling people to just deal with massive files is akin to telling someone who needs money they should be a King. I'm not posting the next Avatar motion picture to YouTube. I'm just sharing what I do to meet my needs, with hope it helps someone else and/or encourage others to share.

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---- Comment withdrawn due to snarky reply below---------------

Bigger brains than mine in the forum might have a better answer, but as far as I know, Lagarith is pretty sweet. It offers lossless compression--which means that it has low ability to compress, but fidelity is very high.

(Unfortunately, it will not be recognized by Photoshop, which is one of my most important video tools. I complained to Adobe, and they more or less claimed they were content to treat Windows AVI as a poor second cousin to a *real* video standard--Quicktime!) :angry:

It ought to be recognized by video editors, though.

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

I was just presenting precisely what I do and closed with a request for suggestions. The process I detailed works for what I do and one can view the results on YouTube.

What non-MPEG codec should I use and where might one find said codec?

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The video hosting sites really like MPEG4 variants (such as XVid) because they're suitable for high resolution, relatively low visual artifacts, and very high compression. I suspect that YouTube delivers its video in MPEG4 format.

But you forgot to stress to your readers the very high compression part. Yes, this is ideal for *final* export, but the codec could get you into a world of hurt if misused to export to an *intermediate* video--one that needs to be edited or composited or color corrected, and so on.

If you're going to monkey further with the video at all, don't use any form of MPEG!

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

How to achieve the best final video quality is an age old question which has plagued man (and woman) kind since the dawn of full color video cards.

After spending an obscene amount of time experimenting with various codecs, packages and parameters, ultimately comparing file sizes and quality rendered on hosting sites; below are the tools and two step process I use.

Regarding Resolution:
I export to full HD 1080p (1920x1080) because that's the absolute max quality on every video hosting site today, including YouTube. Although, the quality is indistinguishable between that and 720x480 when viewing in other than full screen mode.

Codec:
I use the Xvid codec that's in the K-Lite codec pack I downloaded from: http://www.codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_full.htm

Step 1: Export From iClone
Export to AVI using the following settings:
Standard Size >> HD 1080p (1920x1080)
Pixel Aspect >> 100
Final Render >> Checked
Anti-aliased >> Checked
Frame rate >> 25

Select Codec >> Xvid MPEG-4 Codec

Xvid Configuration:
Profile @ Level >> Xvid HD 1080
Encoding type >> Single pass
Target quantizer >> 1.00
Quality slider >> 1 (maximum quality)
Quality preset >> General purpose

On my system it takes about a minute to render every minute of video,i.e. 5 minute video renders in about 5 minutes.

This gives me a file of a manageable size that presents nicely on hosting sites like YouTube and TMUnderground. If it contains everything I need then I'm done at this point. However, I generally like to add credits so . . . .

Step 2: Editing & Render of Final Production

I use AVS Video Editor and Converter to produce the final version. ( http://avsmedia.com). It's relatively cheap for lifetime upgrades and it meets my meager needs.

Open my new video, drop in the credits etc. etc., when I'm ready I select the HD for YouTube Profile with the following settings:

Video Codec: H.264/AVC
Encoding Type >> Single Pass - Bitrate
Average Bitrate >> 4500
Frame Size >> 1920 x 1080
Bitrate >> 4500
Frame Rate >> 25

Audio Codec: MP3
Sample Rate >> 44100 Hz
Size >> 16 bit
Bitrate >> 256 Kbps
Channels >> Stereo

I would very much like to know if this works for you and/or if you have any suggestions as I'm always looking to improve.

Here is one of the video's I've rendered following this process:

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