[Bf-committers] Re: Audio/Video update (Ton Roosendaal)

[Robert Wenzlaff]

At 09:21 AM 9/1/04, you wrote:
>That's what YOU think :) I totally agree with you, of course. I never
>touched any other output format than TGA personally, but most Blender
>users actually - as sad as it may be - use it for making little funky
>movies for the web, and that's why they don't desire production quality,
>but instead quick rendering to a compressed video format.

None the less, if you plan to do any post-production editing, then the 
blender output needs to be low/no compression....  The Sequence editor is 
great, but a full NLE suite it ain't.  Compression should be the VERY LAST 
thing you do to the video before it walks out the door.

Since there are many who do go straight from Blender to the web, that 
should stay an option, but it also means that path does not need to be 
"Pro" quality, since real pro's are going to edit outside Blender...

After we have enough resources to turn the Sequence Editor into a pro NLE 
suite, _then_ we need to worry about pro quality codecs.  So, if Libavcodec 
(ffmpeg) or gstreamer (or something) can support the webbies without a lot 
of code pain, then we should go for it even if it's not a "pro" quality 
toolset.

If nothing else, it helps bridge the output gaps across 
platforms.  Currently, there are formats available to Windows users that 
are difficult to view under *ix or OS X.  The more common formats we share, 
the more likely the users will agree on a "standard" that all platforms can 
view with equal ease.

(It's better now since LibAVCodec supports so many formats, but I remember 
when DivX first appeared, and Windows users got it seamlessly, since it was 
part of the VFWindows framework, and none of the Linux users could view 
their work...)

Robert Wenzlaff