Image sequences for animation

Hi,
I'm a college studio art teacher who also makes animated films. I recently started working with small groups of students creating all types of experimental animation. We use Mac computers and Final Cut pro. I have always experimented with different sequence settings in FCP and Quicktime.
However , I now would like to give my students a good starting point for exporting their work and creating DVD's.
Currently, I export stop-motion images out iStopmotion using Quicktime. I use the Animation codec and sometimes keyframe every 60 frames or sometimes I use no keyframes. (Again, I experiment and see what works.)
This goes into FCP where I set the timeline sequence settings to none or Animation. I export the final edit using
Quicktime, check off make self-contained and place it in a folder.(Larry Jordan recommends this) This file goes directly into DVD studio pro where it is encoded. Most of the time the results are good but I have read a few things in this forum suggesting image sequences that are placed into After Effects might give cleaner results.
Any tips, suggestions or suggested reading on this matter would greatly appreciated.

Personally, image sequences I render in my favorite 3D app (Cinema 4D), which are usually TIFF or TARGA sequences, I bring into After Effects for processing. I despise rendering anything in FCP...AE's render engine is much faster & cleaner IMHO. I just render in the FCP Sequence codec so when I bring it in, I don't have to render.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I do some teaching too, graphics arts students who also learn the basics of storyboarding and then produce their own films within the semester to gain the experience of the entire workflow from an intial treatment to final presentation in front of a jury.

We've done several animations thus far, all hand drawn then scanned as .tiffs, sequentially numbered and imported into Motion for further tweaking. If you have FCP studio at the school, I'm assuming you already have Motion as well. Motion is better at handling Image Sequences than FCP because it recognizes them as such, rather than having to import stacks of folders containing the images and then dropping them into an FCP timeline. It's also much easier to combine image sequences, be it just for a dissolve, or for simple scaling/cropping or compositing work. Motion's layer-based structure (as opposed to FCP's timeline) is similar to Photoshop, and I find that students take to it a lot more quickly than FCP. There's a bit of a learning curve, but not too steep at all for the relatively simple task of assembling animation seqs.

Exporting from Motion is fairly straightforward. After a lot of trial and error, we've found that Motion's Broadcast HD setting at 1280x720p encodes very well to DVD when exported in the Animation codec, then encoded via Compressor.


hth,
Clay

I did some teaching as well and we mostly used AE because it has a "one stop" import for image sequence handling (and also the nice feature to tell you that there might be frames missing).
With FCP never import an image sequence. Use QT Player and then save as dependent movie. QT also allows to set up the frame rate.
But with any of the approaches it won't free you from setting compression markers. This is the main thing for compression quality. You can do that either in FCP or Compressor. But this requires an "visual" understanding of what a keyframe is - that always had been something I tried to teach those students, finally they were very happy about those sometimes very boring lessons as it helped them to get other stuff solved much better, like motion stabilizing.
I haven't tried to use those sequences in Motion like Clay recommends, but also this approach needs a a compression marker setup.

In any case be aware of the 30,000 frame limit for image sequences for any of the apps (some some apps it's even less)

My 2 cents
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

>>"one stop" import for image sequence<<

yes, works the same like in AE. If within Motion you look up a sequence in the file brower you see a file name like BMW(####).tif1:200 indicating the name, a four digit numbering scheme, and then tif 1 of total 200 in the sequence. You import than into a Motion layer and it shows up as a clip.

Clay

I'll try Motion, does it have an option like AE to set the framerate?

Andreas

Hey Everyone,
I really appreciate the information.
I will need to try the " image sequence" approach in both AE and Motion even though I am pretty comfortable in AE.
Once I experiment I'm sure I'll have more questions.
One thing I am little confused about:
When the final sequences are dropped into FCP for the final edit, what are the main sequence settings for the timeline?
Or do you stick with:
Pixel aspect-Square
Field Dominance-None
Timebase-29.97
Compressor-DV/DVCPRO-NTSC
In the past, I used either None or Animation.
Thanks Again,
John Anderson

Settings: I'd use Animation, square pix, no field dominance. The size depends on what the animations were drawn in. We stick with 16:9 formats, and since we're delivering on DVD, usually finish the job up in 1280x720 prior to exporting to compressor. That's a "custom" entry in the size setting. Both Compressor and DVD SP retain the 16:9 aspect. Make sure in DVD SP that your project is set to 16:9. If you're working in 4:3, then stick with that size.

However, if you're doing the final assemble in AE or Motion, there's no need for you to go to FCP. Just use AE's make movie function or Motion's export function for the final playouts in the Animation codec (or "Lossless" in AE) and go straight to Compressor for the encode. Use AE's compostion settings or Motion's edit>project properties for settings as above.

Clay

Thanks Clay,
I tried putting image sequences into both AE and Motion. It was a breeze. I never considered this approach but I like the quality retained in the image. I'm not sure about assembling all the clips in AE or Motion. I like to move things around spontaneously and FCP always provides a way to make editing fluid. Again, I'll just have to test it out.
One thing I left out of my original question is that the style of animation I am supporting with my students is very experimental. Meaning, 3-D stop-motion combined with two-dimensional drawing, green screening etc. In the past, I just wanted them to explore the process and I was less concerned about quality of output.
This brings me to the keyframe question when exporting out of Animation. Based on my reading, it seems that a keyframe every 30 to 60 frames is suggested for video animation that has lots of motion. How do you handle the keyframing issue?
Finally, If I print-to-tape I guess none of this matters.
Thanks, John

Quote
John Anderson
This brings me to the keyframe question when exporting out of Animation. Based on my reading, it seems that a keyframe every 30 to 60 frames is suggested for video animation that has lots of motion. How do you handle the keyframing issue?

If you leave the keyframe field empty, then it's "I-Frame" only which I would prefer. There is still a lossless compression for each frame.

Andreas