[feebsaint]

After being asked, "How do you do that?" enough times (concerning how I make an AVI of my drawings... playing back from start to finish), I decided to make a "How To?" section on my home site. I have a walk through, of 10 steps, from creating an image, to playing back your newly created AVI movie. Go there, and click on "How To?" on my main page. The catch is, you have to have painter in order to create this file. Any version of painter that has scripts should work fine.

Here is my latest movie (image and download hyperlink). The link downloads the AVI format, but I also have it as an SSD on my homepage under "Watch Me Draw."



grin.AVI, 916k (plays pretty fast -- sorry)

A point I didn't cover in my tutorial, because I just found out, is that you should create the image in a number that is divisible by 4 pixels, (also... do yourself a huge favor, and find an indeo codec --ver. 5.01 is available-- on the internet, install it on your computer, for maximum compression/maximum quality-- after you install it, it will show up when you make your AVI from Painter).

Post here, or e-mail me, if you have any problems, or if you simply have comments Have fun... and good luck with your AVI movies!!



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~-Mike May-~

mikespencil.com

"I Draw Stuff"

[Digital Genesis]

Very nice, and very appreciated by us all.

Inspirational to say the least. I'm looking forward to seeing more scripts from your hand

For the sake of being a baby, I recompressed your muscleface avi using the divx codec.
I gained a 50% decrease with only minimal artifacts.
We're all interested in conserving bandwidth and hd space, so I thought I'd share my experience

Anyone interested in learning about the divx (mpeg4) codec should do a websearch for it.
The official homepage is divx.ctw.cc
It has the codec, but you won't find much other info, so be sure to look around the web for further details.
If anyone is interested in the hard to find 'mpeg4fix' which takes care of certain playback issues, let me know and I'll upload it w/ link.

[Freddio]

Divx

[feebsaint]

Digital, could you do me a favor and post that link you mentioned? Also, I had major problems compressing my "Sadness" AVI(11+ meg). Most of my codecs would not compress it due to a "strange file size." Could you look at it? It's on my website, linked in my signerature.

I'm going to check into that divx codec right now. I want to make the files as small as possible, so that helps completely. If you either email me the resulting file, or link to it here, I'll replace the existing one on my site.

I really appreciate your knowlege here. AVI compression is new to me, so any tricks to save size would be great. I was all proud of myself for getting the file down to 916k, so the fact you got it half that size is completely incredible, and I'd love to see/use that file. I may email you if you don't respond here. Thanks a ton, fella

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~-Mike May-~

mikespencil.com

"I Draw Stuff"

[burn0ut]

Ooo damn, that is sweeet. haha he looks funny as hell. keep it up man!@

[Digital Genesis]

Hi again,

As far as the recompression of muscleface avi, I used the 2.55 meg version, not the 3rd and newest sketch
The resulting avi, after recompressing with the divx codec in Virtual Dub (you can play with the settings) was around 800 kb.
I'm sure it could be compressed even further from a pure uncompressed avi with much better results.

I tried loading the sadness avi to recompress it, but it wouldn't play. Maybe I got a corrupt d/l.

I use VirtualDub for my video editing. It's small, extremely fast, free and can be found at:
http://www186.pair.com/vdub/index.html

The mpeg4fix can be found here:
http://thunder.prohosting.com/~taoist/avi/mpeg4x.zip

It only fixes playback issues. It doesn't change the encoding in any way. Make sure to follow the install instructions, and make sure you have the divx codec installed already.

-

Divx encoded files can be a tricky format to use on a site like yours, because the site receives hits from all kinds of people. Many of whom will likely not have the divx codec installed on their system.

Usually this is not a problem for other codecs, since Media Player simply connects to Microsoft and d/ls the codec in question. However, divx (mpeg4) is not supported by microsoft, and so people have to find and install it by themselves (meaning, it goes beyond the 'point and click' boundary for ordinary folk).

I should have thought of this when I posted my little experiment.

Still, Divx is the best codec out there and those who install it can certainly benefit from its superior quality.

-

My advice to you, assuming you have plenty of hd space, is to save the avi from painter uncompressed. Then load it in Virtual Dub and encode it from there (using divx or your favorite codec).
That way you can easily play around and find the optimal settings for your movies, plus the risk of getting a corrupted movie due to Painter issues is significantly less.

Regards,

Me

[MrBrian]

Holy crap, you draw so cleanly!
Oi!

[Zorglub]

Man, I wish I could draw that fast hehehe
kidding
But seriously great job

[Freddio]

great I love your work..

very cool what your doing with your scripts and avis..

[kanabis]

lol digital genesis .. so how many divx movies u got

[elam]

Can Virtualdub copmpress individual frames, such as TGA's, or does it just do movies?


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Elam
-------
"Beef jerky time!"

[feebsaint]

Just movies, I'm afraid. Under file, it doesn't just say "open," it says "open movie."

So you know it's catered to just one thing

Digital Genesis... thanks again! The added info is wonderful, and I'll be sure to reroute my compression steps accordingly

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~-Mike May-~

mikespencil.com

"I Draw Stuff"