12 FPS question?

I have a question. I am working on a MAC. I have been rendering out my movies in DV streams. I have been cutting dialogue scenes that have been about a minute in length(sometimes a little longer).

Now, I just took the MOST RECENT setting. I haven’t messed with it at all. So far, everything has looked fine to me. The scenes play fine, the dialogue(with a little mouth work) looks great…but I noticed in the animation properties that it says 12 FRAMES PER SECOND.

Now, as I said, everything looks fine…am I unwittingly creating a problem for myself as I know that the rate of film and video is 24-30 frames per second. This movie will eventually be on DVD and maybe even film.

I was just curious and figured I would ask the knowledgeable(spelling?) people here.

Thank you,

Evan Jacobs
www.anhedeniafilms.com

12 frames per second is what you want for web animation film is 24 fps video NTSC is I believe 29.97 fps I am in the USA so my concern is with NTSC i don’t know about PAL the European standard. but most animation is created at 24 frames per second and it is the easiest to work with unless you are making projects for the internet only than 12 fps is what you want. the best animation is done in twos meaning you animate every other frame so working at 24 fps you can work in twos fours sixes which will all divvied evenly at 24 fps which is a great help if you later want to convert your animation later with a editing program. I did my first animation at 30 fps and was to far into it when I found this stuff out. If you change your frame rate in toon Boom after you after you have done lip sync you will throw it off if you take 12 fps and convert the frame rate using imovie it will add 18 fps to your animation which might make your animation jerky and affect your sound quality as well. I read a book Hollywood 2D digital animation (the new flash production revolution) and what the big studios do is animate 24 fps convert it to 30 fps than transfer it to 1 inch tape and edit it. also if you animate at 24 fps and are animating in twos and later convert it to 12 fps you wont lose any of your animation you will just lose the extra frames it will however be a large file for the internet. one more suggestion if you don’t have Quick time pro invest the 29.00 dollars it is very useful for conversions and its cut an paste feature. Hope this helps.

Good Luck 8)

Thank you for your informative response.

I may not be sure about this but I think that exporting to DV streams might be what has saved me. I mean, like I said everything looks fine when I watch them.

I even watched some tests I did exporting them to iDVD and everything was fine. They played fine.

I thank you again for your response.

Hi, Evan,

I’ve been using Toon Boom again, after using other animation approaches. I had been exporting my scenes using regular QuickTime with NO compression and loved the look of it–very accurate.

I’d heard about the advantages of using DV Stream–especially if one is using iMovie to edit all the scenes together–which I plan to do, so I tried it out. The quality was awful. You say yours is good. Is there a particular setting I should be using in DV Stream that I’m overlooking?

Also, thanks scsealbeach for the clarification on frames per second. Very helpful.

Best Wishes,
-Elwood

Elwood,

Hey, good to speak to you again.

I always noticed that DV Streams looked a bit “fuzzy” when watched on my MAC. I also noticed that my regular store bought DVD movies had the same problems.

Then I read on this message board that they look “fuzzy” because they aren’t interlaced or something. I tried to find the topic but it was awhile. I think the SUBJECT heading was: CAN I MAKE A MOVIE IN TOONBOOM THAT LOOKS LIKE “THE FAMILY GUY”?

When I render out to an iDVD, I am AMAZED at how good the quality is.

-Evan

The reason a DV stream looks fuzzy on your computer is that the resolution on a computer monitor is different then that of at TV set so after you burn a DVD that fuzzy look will go away even if you play the DVD on your computer it should look good as your DVD playing software takes care of the resolution. I export from toon Boom as a Quick Time movie and than convert it after edit in Imove or Quick Time Pro to a DV Stream. I think you can leave it as a Quick Time movie and convert it to NTSC or PAL and you will be OK, There are so many choices and trying to find the right way to do this is frustrating all you get is a bunch of double talk and no clear procedures, and if I doesn’t work they blame it on your DVD player, I am having problems after installing Ilife 5 I don’t have a super drive and IDVD won’t support external Drives and apple uses 3rd party drives in there computers it’s very upsetting, I have a LaCie duel layered DVD drive and use Toast Titanium to burn my DVDs,

One other thing Toon Boom uses Quick Time to export and import things so when you export a movie you are using the quick time options menu.