The possible size of your medias depends on the speed of your computer and the available memory.
If you plan to use several layers, a good compromise is to use media that is 512x384.
However Modul8 accepts any resolutions without scaling down the media. You can also use different sizes for each movie without any problem.
For movies, Modul8 offers several pre-loading strategies.
- If your loops are very short (1 to 2 seconds) all the codecs will have the same performances because your loops should be preloaded and decompressed in memory. This is a very smooth mode but it uses a lot of memory. So for very short loops, we recommend that you use the codec "animation millions of colors+". This codec supports the alpha-channel and it will allow you to prepare in advance the transparency of your media, the alpha channel. It gives you more freedom then the luma/chroma keys for generating transparency. If your movies are made of plain colors and flat surfaces this codec can also be used for longer loops.
- If your loops are longer, you should use the Photo-JPEG code with high-quality compression. It is a good-compromise between the bandwidth and the CPU time cost. Also the quality is very good. It does not have time compression and is very performant for speed change and for backward play back. If your movies are not too long, they will be preloaded compressed in memory. So even if it is not as fast as the precedent case (the movie still has to be decompressed in real-time), the disk is not used for play back. If your movies are too long, they are streamed from the hard-disk, in this case having a fast hard disk is very important. You may think of using an external harddisk to improve the performances.
- If your movies are in black and white, the "Graphic" code gives very high performances. Nevertheless, the quality is lower than the photo jpeg.
For still images a good format is PNG or PSD (photoshop). These two formats allow very high quality transparency with a full 8 bits alpha-channel. You should avoid using images bigger than 1024x768 if you want to get the best possible performances.
Of course, the best is to experiment yourself.
You can also read the following thread on VJ Central that has a very good coverage of the different possible codecs:
http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php? ... eadid=2641