What render format should I use so that I can add sounds to my animation in a video editor? I’ve looked at my options and the only one that seems plausible is ffmpeg, but I have no idea how to use it. Unfortunately, I’m not a developer (though I have some coding experience) so I’m sure this is probably a really stupid question. Edit I suppose I should rephrase to ask how do I export avi or other movie formats? When I go to render the option does not present itself to me. The Target displays only: Auto, bmp, dv, ffmpeg, gif, imagemagick (wtf?), jpeg, null, null-tile, openexr, png, ppm, yuv420p.
1a) On a side note: Does anyone know of a free video editor that edits frame by frame?
I’ve heard that I can use Papagayo with Synfig. How would I go about doing that?
Say I want to make an animation available on DVD. The settings are at a high resolution for the DVD, but I also want to show a preview on my website. How do I resize the animation without cropping it?
I’m a traditional animator, and I’ve imported images for frame by frame animations, but I want to use some of my images as objects that can be set to a vector (scrolling backgrounds, bouncy balls, etc). How would I go about doing that?
You can use what ever format your video editor can read. Regarding to what formats can be obtained with the different targets please check this page: synfig.org/Render_options. I prefer to export to png sequence because ffmpeg gives average results due to you cannot control the parameters passed to it (it is in fact a ppm sequence piped to a call to ffmpeg executable). Yuv420p is also interesting if your video editor can read it. It is lossless codec and paccked in one file. Not good for very long animations.
Windows Movie Maker can do some good things. At last you can always stick together all the png seuqence using ffmpeg and the proper command line. See: synfig.org/Tips#Render_to_AVI_wi … quality.3F
Use papagayo as usual. Produce your voice file and rename and insert some additional text lines on it following this instructions: es.youtube.com/watch?v=3289Vf5-aKI
Just modify the Image size X and Image size Y in pixles. It would keep the phisical dimensions (units) untouch with the default links locks settings. For instance if you have 720x576 just reduce it to 360x288 (50%) by changing those values in the corresponding fields of the Render options window.
You can import images to synfig too. Just go to Caret Menu>File>Import and select your image. After that you have to learn some things:
Synfig works with layers.
Layers are applied from top to bottom. Each layer has a Blend Method what defines how does that layer combine with the rest that are below it.
Some layers produce visual result by itself (circle, region, etc.). Others deforms or modify the colors of the layers below; we call them filters (Blur, Clamp, et.) or deforms what is below (rotate, warp, stretch, twirl, spherize).
To prevent layers affect to other layers in a not desired way, layers can be encapsulated inside “inline canvases” using Paste Canvas layer.
Those are the basic concepts. So if you are just going to scroll, move or rotate a fixed image then you can keep it as a imperted image (take account that you can zoom in and out the whole canvas so the imported image would have the proper resolution/size to match your quality standard). In other case, if you plan to deform a character, (make eyeblinks, talk, walk, etc.) it is better to trace the character using a image as reference and animate the corresponding vector layers.
Re: 1a) On a side note: Does anyone know of a free video editor that edits frame by frame?
I often use Blender’s sequence editor to take sequentially numbered frames that Synfig puts out and converting them to . It’s a bit fiddly to edit frame by frame but could do the job.
I’ve also used Virtualdub - virtualdub.org/features.html . Again it’s not really a video editor, but might be useful for what you want.
Non-free - I use Pinnacle Studio. Came with a video card, and I know how it works very well.