Images to Animation
images_to_animation incorporates the functionality of Gromada's VideoMach into an easy to use tool.
Animation CODECS try to default to TechSmith Screen Capture Codec, or, if that doesn't exist, to the HuffYUV codec (both are lossless).
images_to_animation supports several animation file formats including:
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AVI Windows Audio Video Interleaved (avi)
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Windows Media Video - WMV produces some of the smallest files and this output is virtually guaranteed to run on any up to date Windows computer. However, the quality can be poor unless the data rate is increased.
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MPG Moving Pictures Expert Group, MPEG-1 (mpg,mpeg)
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HAV High quality Audio Video (hav) HAV is a format that can be played with the freeware program Imagen (formally HAV player). This format has some distinct advantages, specifically it uses lossless compression. This results in the highest quality output. Surprisingly, HAV files are often as small as or smaller than lower quality AVI or MPG files.
When you run, the first thing that will happen is a window will pop up which allows you to set the Output Animation Codec:
This shows the selected default CODEC for the type of animation file you've created. There are four supported bitmap animation file types which are AVI, WMV, MPG (MPEG), and HAV.
The AVI parameters window has the most options. The first thing to take notice of is the colored circles on the leftmost column. Only those colored GREEN are fully supported. Blue and yellow may work but will likely have issues and red is not recommended. With each CODEC type, additional options may be available.
The Windows Media Video (WMV) CODEC has only one parameter which is not labeled (this is a Windows generated panel). The parameter is bit rate which defaults to 1000 and has a max value of 8,000. Higher values give higher quality and a larger file size.
The MPEG encoder parameters provides several useful options including DVD.
The HAV format has only two types and the ability to set the key frames.
