User`s guide

69
Notes on Animation Codec
Animation codec is lossless. When you compress an image with the animation codec it
preserves all of the data. You should not use this codec on normal video because it generates
very big files, but since the NLE file is about 98% black the animation codec is very good for
this purpose.
The millions of colors+ codec generates a movie that contains an alpha track. The resulting video
will contain 32 bits per pixel (8 bits for each of R, G, B and alpha). A millions of colors video
only contains R, G and B data. Millions of colors+ makes the file 33% bigger (24 bits to 32 bits
per pixel) but it also means that you can use an alpha track effect on the imported clip when you
import the movie into your NLE. It is not necessary to use millions of colors + if you do not use
alpha channel to merge the black video to your NLE video.
If you use Animation codec, the Quality option should not do anything since it is lossless but it
should be at 100% anyway.
FPS must be 29.97 for drop frame video as most video on NLE systems use drop frame.
Key frames are not meaningful for the Animation codec. A key frame is a frame that is self
contained and doesn't reference any other video frame in order to construct its own video frame
data. As each frame of video in an animation codec should be spatially independent, probably
key frame in the animation codec has no meaning.
Data rate limit should not be specified, since by putting a value here it will cause the video to be
limited in its resolution and we want 100% quality. This value should be meaningless for the
animation codec. You would want to limit the data rate if you were streaming your video and
needed to limit the size of each frame to a specific value. When you limit the data rate the quality
of the compressed image will decrease. This is not what we want for our NLE closed caption
image.
Black Video File Size If you use Animation codec or any uncompressed codec to
generate the black video, the size of the file would be enormous. If you need to transfer
the file to a different location, it is advisable to zip the file before transfer, Typically the
file will be reduced to less than 5% of the original file.
Alpha Channel: You can select either AVI file output or QuickTime file output if
QuickTime is installed. The selection of “Millions of Colors+” in the QuickTime codec
dialog box will generate a 32-bit output file containing an alpha channel. Other output
selections generate 24 bit movies. Note: If you generate an alpha channel you should set
the Secondary Row equal to the Primary Row in the Preferences dialog, to prevent a
second occurrence of closed caption data from being inserted into your video program.