Internet Export Help

Is there a tutorial covering exporting TBS4 projects to be viewed on the web? I have a 3 minute QT movie weighing in at over 100mb. I have set sound elements to streamed, but the movie will not open and start playing on my website until fully downloaded. I also tried swf but the frames are jerky and sound cuts out after a few seconds. There seem to be so many options for settings (H.264 etc) that choosing an appropriate format is a bit bewildering. I have browsed the TB forum and a forum for my web design software but find the advice on this subject a bit nebulous. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

If you have the Fast Start option triggered in the Options of the Quicktime (Not actually in the video option at the root level or the options).

This being said be aware that it may take lot of time for the web browser to consider you have long enough buffered for a 100 mb file.

The compressors are the actual codecs you have installed on your machine so this may differ from one machine to the other which makes it quite impossible to document. I guess the important thing for the compression itself is the quality and the color depth, this will mostly be affecting the file size. Else then that it is a matter of finding a codecs that fits the animation and give you a good compression level while keeping good enough quality.

Best regards,

Ugo

(P.S. the interface Quicktime option is actually the exact same interface as the one from Quicktime Pro so you might want to go get extra information from Apple’s forum).

Thanks for your reply. However, I am no clearer on optimising toonboom animations for the web. Has anyone out there got a Mac (mine’s an iMac G5) who has created an animation in TBS4 and exported it to view streamed on a website? Could you put down what export settings you used and any advice you might think relevant? Thanks

Well, “Ken Stone” has written extensively about FCP including QuickTime:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_homepage_index.html

Check out his “QuickTime movies for the web”:
(a little old, but still relevant - for “Sorenson Video 3” just use “H.264”)
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/qt_movies_from_fcp.html

Cheers
Nolan

Thank you. I have used the settings for exporting as H.264. It takes a a huge time to render! 16 minutes for an 11 second section! Not looking forward to exporting the full 3 minutes movie.

Using: iMac G5 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / OSX 10.4.11

Well, my recent Project “Rudi & Roland”
http://web.mac.com/nolan.scott/Gallery/Rudi_%26_Roland.html
original size: 1920 x 1080 / project-length: 2 minutes.

Here are my QuickTime export-settings:

Compression Type: H.264
Frame Rate : Automatic
Key Frames : Frame Recording
Quality : Medium
Data Rate : Automatic
Encoding : Best Quality (Multi-pass)
Size : 480 x 270
Sound : AAC / Stereo / 44.100kHz
Fast Start

Render-Time = 8 minutes
File Size = 23.4 MB

Cheers
Nolan

Still slow - even changing Data Rate to Automatic. Apart from the movie dimensions the only parameter setting different to yours is sound - AAC. I cannot find this in the list of settings for compressor - so I used MPEG4 (which is shown as AAC (low complexity) in its options).

I am using a single core Imac G5 at 2GHz. OSX 10.4.9

NB. My Frame Rate options do not include Automatic - I have used ‘current’

Well, all your settings are absolutely fine…
and your computer should be lightening fast…

Have you ever thought upgrading to 10.4.11 and QuickTime 7.4.1 ?
(maybe that might make all the difference)

Are you experiencing this slowness when exporting from any application ?

Cheers
Nolan

I have upgraded to OSX 10.4.11 - QT was already 7.4.1. I also checked TBS4 preferences. Under Display the render was Quartz 2d. I changed this to OPen GL and moved the memory use slider to unlimited. There was still no change to speed of render (even after restarting).

I have done a small animation of a circle moving over 200 frames. This took 27 seconds to render. With an added sound element the render time was the same. It may be that my cartoon is too vector heavy. The background is all vector. Did you vectorise your imported images in ‘Rudi and Roland’? Or did you maintain bitmap status?

Well, in “Rudi & Roland” I didn’t “vectorize” the imported bitmaps.
(I presume that wouldn’t have made much of a difference)

Regarding your 200 frame animation, I guess 27 seconds render-time is fairly normal,
depending on original project-size and codec and size you’re rendering to.
(changing from H.264 to Animation might speed up the render-time considerably)

Please keep in mind the more complex the project, adding Colour-Transform-,
Clipping- or Drop-Shadow-Effects will hugely increase render-time.

Last night I just did a preview-render: 1500 frames, lots of gradients and textures, moving backgrounds and water, colour-transform-effects, animated characters…

Render-Time: 46 minutes

and this was only the QuickTime-Preview !
The “real-thing” using a PNG image-sequence 1920 x 1080 might be a little longer.

All my projects are mostly rendered out of Studio as image-sequence (PNG,PSD or TIFF),
those are imported into Final-Cut-Express for editing… using HDV-AIC 1080i50.
Then the project can be rendered to any size (16:9) and codec one likes.
For “Rudi & Roland”, with the before mentioned settings, it needed 8 minutes.

I presume, Toon Boom Studio can’t really render faster than what you’re experiencing.

Cheers
Nolan

Thank you very much for your full response. You have made me re-think rendering. I have now rendered the movie as animation with no compression - 45 minutes total. I bought Quicktime Pro and compressed the QT movie with H.264 and AAC - 6 minutes. A pity the TBS4 guide does not make the user aware of more effective procedures for rendering. So I am glad you outlined your method. Finally, I must say the car passing at the end of ‘Rudi and Roland’ made my jaw drop. Excellent.