Encoder with After Effects

[kayoti]

Hi, this may seem a little off topic, but I am having a hard time. I notice a lot of talk about encoders/decoders and whatnot, and realized some of you may be able to help me. I have a few short animations that I have edited with Adobe After Effects and want to render them so they can be played on both Mac and PC's with no decoders needed to install to watch them. I have been using DivX and including an install file with my assignments, but the teachers are not too keen on the 'additional work' they must do just to view my assignment. Any help would be WONDERFUL!

Thanks,
-kayoti

[GbrNole]

the most universal choice would probably be to encode it as a flash or shockwave file.

the other alternative is to encode with .wmv it will work on just about any pc or mac then. wmv quality is decent but not fantastic. real media isn't much better but at least there's a wizard for rv10.

[stanger89]

Quicktime maybe, should work on any mac. Also playable on PC if you install the right software.

[bluenote]

I would suggest mpeg2 or mpeg-1 if you truly want it to be "hands off' compatible with whatever PC or Mac happens to run it. YMMV

Cory

[lebedev]

I believe MPEG-1 (aka VCD) would be the format of choice for encoding video to play on a range of different computer platforms and OS versions while minimizing the likelyhood that the user will have to install additional software/codecs. Note that I say MPEG-1 and not MPEG-2; most versions of windows need additional software to run MPEG-2.

A good source for info on different video codecs (and other things video related) is www.videohelp.com. You probably would want to check out the How-To's on Converting.

Also go to google groups (groups.google.com) and check out the newsgroup "rec.video.desktop" (groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.video.desktop. There you can search for just about any question you can think of that has to do with computer video.

Good luck,
-Ben

[MixTracks]

Aggreed... We do this all the time here at work. MPG1 is your best choice.

[salsbst]

Triple (quadruple?) that -- MPEG-1 is the way to go if it suffices for your artwork. If it's a computer-generated animation then it should survive the compression very nicely. Don't go from the Divx to MPEG-1, go from the source.