Guide to Making Animations

Follow the guidelines below when creating a SCEC-VDO animation.  Download the attached rubric if you want to see what it takes to make a high quality SCEC-VDO animation. Click here to upload an animation.

Animation Rendering Guide                 

Rendering in SCEC-VDO

When rendering a file after scripting in SCEC-VDO, you will be given the option to compress the file.  If the video is going to be edited later, leave at 100% quality.  If the video is going straight to YouTube and is over 3 minutes, you may compress down to no lower than 75%.  If the video is over 7 minutes, you may want to compress to .mp4 format using the instructions below.  For all other purposes use the guide below.

Exporting or compressing to .mp4 or .flv

When converting an animation for use on the website for downloading or after post production, the preferred format to use is .mp4.  It provides the best combination of compression, file size, and quality.  (The Flash Video format, .flv, will produce similar file sizes and is the only format that currently works on the site.)

The table to the left gives sample widths and the bit-rate you would use for exporting a video file to the .mp4 or .flv format format.  The table is a guide more than it is a definitive list of what you should be rendering at.  It also gives you the sample size for a 1 minute video at those sizes and bit-rates.  Changing the width to 640 px will be the standard for SCEC-VDO animations unless a larger resolution is needed.*

(*The height is not included because it will depend on the aspect ratio of your video. Use the Aspect Ratio Calculator to figure out the height of your video if you are going to resize it.  Never make the resolution larger)

 -When exporting to .mp4, you want to use the H.264 .mp4, codec if available, and not the .mp4 ISMA codec.  H.264 It can be found in Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.  If H.264 is not available, export to regular .mp4.

-When exporting to .flv, the best choice is the On2 VP6 codec which is used by Adobe Flash Encoder.

For YouTube – If the video is going to YouYube, you would want to export at a high bit-rate.  The bit-rates in the table above will   produce a high quality video that YouTube will display clearly. 

For a shorter video – Keep the bit-rate high as in the table above.  That will give you the best looking video and manageable file size. Beware, a video file can easily grow large in size if the bit-rate is too high and it is a longer video.  Use the bit-rates as guides. 

For a longer video – Lower the bit-rate.  Eg. A 10 minute video at 640 x 480px using a bit-rate of 1350 kb/s will give you a file of about 100 MB but the quality will not be that great.  If rendered using a bit-rate of 3000 kb/s, the file will be almost 400 MB.  This is mostly applicable if uploading the video to the site for downloading as the site will not upload videos larger than 100 MB

Again, these numbers are guidelines and great starting points to making a high quality video.  If after exporting your file is still too large, either try lowering the resolution keeping the same aspect ratio (use the aspect ratio calculator) or lower the bit-rate.  If the video quality is not great, raise the bit-rate or lower the resolution.