Video Rendering

I am planning on producing half hour videos using Adobe After Effects 4.0

Currently I have a Duron 750mhz. 286 RAM and a ATI Radeon 32MB video card with S-Video out.

Now here's my question or questions.

1) For rendering these half hour videos with Adobe Effects wich components will I have to upgrade to make rendering go a lot faster. Currently it takes me more than 12 hours.

2)Wich video cards are good for video editing work with video in and out for less than $300. I already know about the ATI ALL in WONDER. Just want to know if there's anything else that's better or equivelent.

3) Video compression? Which one? I don't mind it being too blocky but I want the colors to be there. Currently I found that
selecting the Cinepak Codec by Radius works the the fastest and isn't to pixulated except for the colors, It looks blochy.
Any other copressions that will work beter?

That's it for now, please help me out people.

Athy 1.4 and 1gb of ram OS(win2000) and since its 2D your working in the Matrox G450 dualhead has unsurpassed image quality(may not speed things up ,but staring at it for ,long hours is going to be easier http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/wink.gif )

Tanx A.B.Normal

The Matrox Marvel G450 eTV is probably a tad more suited for your video in/out needs.

In terms of video Codecs, it's no wonder Cinepak is blotchy. It's actually quite an old codec, but none the less, still a goody, but only for specific things. It's advantages is that it is quick and common. However, it only operates in Thousands of colours, not Millions, which means you will loose a considerable amount of image quality and produce banding and blotchyness.

For mastering (retaining upmost quality), you should consider a lossless compression, such as Huffyuv. It's about the best lossless compression available at the moment. The drawback with lossless compression however, is filesize is still considerably large (or huge is some cases).

The only way around this, is to use a lossy compression and sacrifice image quality for file size. The DivX codec is incredibly popular, utilising mPEG-4. There are a number of mPEG-4 based codecs available at the moment, however this one has proved to be among the best, if not the best.

Another which is a little easier to use and more failsafe is Ligos Indeo Video, developed by Intel. It won't compress as small as DivX, but will sometimes produce a better image quality.

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[This message has been edited by Bink (edited 08-21-2001).]

OK, great this helps a lot. I will try out each of these and see which one works the best. Size isn't much of an issue since I'm going to only save the movie on my hard drive untill I record it onto a tape and than I'm going to delete it.

Now here's another question >>> when I'm transvering my video from my computer throu the video card out into my VCR docables matter. I mean will the type of cable I use make a differance in quality of the image or sound? Is S-Video a good choice?

Quote:

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[*]Component video -- each primary is sent as a separate video signal.

• The primaries can either be RGB or a luminance-chrominance transformation of them (e.g., YIQ, YUV).
  
• Best color reproduction
  
• Requires more bandwidth and good synchronization of the three components

[*]Composite video -- color (chrominance) and luminance signals are mixed into a single carrier wave. Some interference between the two signals is inevitable.
[*]S-Video (Separated video, e.g., in S-VHS) -- a compromise between component analog video and the composite video. It uses two lines, one for luminance and another for composite chrominance signal.

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Now most VCR's only provide Composite video connectors. If your lucky, your VCR will also support S-Video, in which case, you should try to always use that.

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[This message has been edited by Bink (edited 08-22-2001).]