garageCube

[madsmeskalin]

So, I wanted to take a step up from the PNG codec to the Animation Codec, but found out that its unplayable on my Mac Pro 2.8ghz Quadcore, 16gb ram, 2x Ati Radeon 5770. One layer of 2400x600 is okay, but if I do several or sync them to bpm with the scratch button in modul8, it lags or the whole program shuts down. Even ProRes works better. I find that to be strange, as I´ve seen several on the forums mentioning they are using the animation codec.

So my question is: is it any codecs that are better (smoother) than PNG, that doesnt tax the computer as much as the animation codec? It needs to include alpha channel.

Also, I found that the animation codec produces huge file sizes. Some of clips (16sec) was over 3gb!

[ilan]

You can use Animation (lossless) but only with very small clips. It is really meant for post production when working with a traditional environment (animate, render, animate, render again) where RAM requirements for real time playback are not a concern.

PNG is the best solution available at the moment, and we are certainly on the look out for better performing codecs that produce small file sizes.

I read somewhere that some people are able to use Pro Res 444 that supports alpha channels. You aught to give that a try.

[madsmeskalin]

I tried the Pro Res 444, but its not that much better than the animation codec. I often use 4 or 5 clips with 2400x600, all syncronised to bpm with the scratch button. Am I asking too much of the software with ProRes? Maybe I should switch back to PNG.

Also: I have two ssd harddisks and 16gb ram. Could somebody give me advice how to set up my preferences. I used to have a macbook pro, but now that I have a mac pro I want to really take advantage of the hardware. How many MB´s should I set the ram content, anit-aliasing etc.

[madsmeskalin]

Eventually, is there anything I can do to make the png codec run smoother?
I was thinking about content creation, maybe turn up to 60fps or anything. On some clips it works fine, other clips really doesnt work with it.

[smo0thiecake]

mp4 codec with H264

[vanakaru]

With my 2009 MBP I can not use ProRes444 with alpha live. Maybe two layers will play OK depending how much there is pixel to pixel change frame by frame. My max usable size is 1024x768. PNG+ works better - 3 layers fine.
So PNG should be good. I have noticed that PNG out of AE works better than from FCP. But this may be illusion - I use AE most of the times.
And for instance I use live camera + one layer PNG+ 1200x600 on my old G4 PowerBook and it almost works smooth.