Animation Compression VS. No Compression

I myself cannot tell the difference. I always compress my uncompleted shots with nothing just to be on the safe side, but I really can't tell the difference between Animation and No compression. Animation doesn't have files as large as No Compression. So I guess what I'm saying is,

Is there a difference in quality?

 

The Animation codec is meant for 2D animation with lots of stuff of one solid color.

Is there a difference in quality? Well, it depends. If you're going to post your movies on the Web, don't use Animation, because if people resize their QuickTime window it'll look like crap. (That's my experience.) Animation codec looks perfect on your computer screen ONLY when you keep it at the resolution you exported at. (Again, my experience.)




Rick McCallum loves you!

 

aaah.. so thats what the animation codec is!

 

From Discreet's Codec page:

General Information

QuickTime's "Animation" codec is best suited for storage of two-dimensional animation and computer-generated video content. It is lossy at quality settings from1%-99%, and lossless at 100%. Animation at 100% is generally used as a "storage" or intermediate work format.

Pros, Cons & Tips

Pros

This codec is great for sequences of screen images, such as those captured by utilities such as CameraMan and Spectator. Since it is lossless, Animation at 100% will not introduce any noise into the video signal, which is why it is sometimes used instead of JPEG. The Animation codec works with all bit depths. It is slightly slower than the None codec, but usually produces smaller files.

Cons

At 100% quality, files compressed with the Animation codec may be quite large. Images captured from videotape generally have visual noise which can corrupt the inherent similarity of the pixels and make it more difficult for the codec to achieve good compression.

Tips

The Animation codec's performance and compression ratios are highly dependent on the images being compressed. The codec is very sensitive to picture changes and generally works best on images that have been generated synthetically.
Faster PowerMacs can play video which has been losslessly compressed with this codec. This could be useful for previews of intermediate stages.

 

Honestly ive tried this codec quite a few times but I can always see the compression, even at 100% lossless it stands out. This is both with Video which it says may have issues, and CG.