Advice on 3D graphics format & size please

PeterWright wrote on 8/16/2006, 5:43 PM

I have a project to be shot on HDV, initially output as SD, but with the option of putting out a HD version later.

The executive producer has a high end graphics contact and wants to include some 3D animations here and there, to introduce segments, maybe embellish a transition etc.

If I'm editing in Vegas from HDV, what would be the best video format to ask the animations to be delivered as - presumably will need an alpha channel so I can mix with video.

Also frame resolution - HDV is nominally 1440 x 1080, but this becomes 1920 x 1080 with square pixels, so would this be the frame size the animators need?

Thanks for any advice.

Peter

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/16/2006, 6:26 PM

Just guessing here, but i suspect the best format is probably going to be a still image sequence. PNG and Targa are both popular, compress very well, and both handle alpha. The other option is probably uncompressed AVI which will be enormous and probably impractical.

The stills will probably be 1920x1080. Vegas will handle them just fine.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 8/16/2006, 7:52 PM

uncompressed AVI & a TGA sequence are the same file size (framerate, size, etc. being equal). I'd do the tga's my self. Just give them the res/aspect ratio/fps you want & they should have no proble getting the video you want. But interlaced video + progressive animations can sometimes look funny. The progressive may jitter somewhat.

Then again, they could always render it out then compress it to an HD filetype & also render out an alpha channel to an HD file type. Then you have the alpha seperate & can use it if you wanted.

PeterWright wrote on 8/16/2006, 10:07 PM

Thanks for the replies.

Asking for still image sequences sounds a good idea - then I should be able to avoid any issues with codecs, quicktime or any other such problems!