Flash, CS3, Premiere Pro Question HELP :)

[scootly]

Hey everyone, I need help with making my finished movie file smaller. Just my opening scene when saved is 15 seconds and 55MB large. Is this normal???

First, yall probably want to know my process. I'm positive that I haven't come up with the perfect process but this is what I've been doing.

First, I do my drawing in CS3. I save the layered files as PSD file so I can return and edit them. However, I save the finished picture as PNG. I've read that PNG is the preferred picture file type to be used in Flash.

Second, I import the PNG files into flash in order to animate them. I save the animation as an FLA so I can return and edit it. I also export it as an AVI. I then convert the AVI to a MOV file in Quicktime.

Third, I import the MOV file into Premiere. I also use Audacity to record vocals. I import them into Premiere so that my animation has sound. When I save the premiere file it is what I would consider massive.

I know there are some tools out there that can make this process easier such as Toon Boom but it does not work on my computer for some reason. It installs but won't load. I read that it can take a while to load so I let my PC sit for 2 hours and when I returned it hadn't loaded anything. :(

So, would 55MB be normal for 15 seconds of animation? Also, feel free to offer advice on a quicker process. I'll admit I'm new to animation and at this point, this process is what my research has developed. I see lots and lots of tutorials for learning how to use software but I can not find much information at all about the balance in file size and picture quality. Also, at 55MB the picture quality and animation is pretty crappy. One last bit of info is that I'm using 20fps to animate,

[ikken]

always export your animation as PNG sequence once you're done animating in flash,
import the image sequence into premiere/AE and from there export your file as video
I can't say if 55 mb is a lot or not - it will depend on resolution;
you may use h.264 codec to achieve both fine quality and smaller filesize, but only use it when exporting the final movie, use image sequences for any inbetween work.


and by the way, your source files could take a lot of space - when I was rendering my demoreel, 1 minute (1440 frames @ png @ 1280:720 px) of animation took 1,5 GB on the HDD.

[Razorleaf]

The size of each individual frame will have a direct impact on the size of the avi or mov file. For example if you are using 2000x2000 for each canvased frame the end result will be much larger than if you were using 1000x1000.

Once I have my frames the way I want them in CS3 I change the canvas size of the 'image sequence' to a smaller more manageable size and it converts the entire animation. This way I still have my original canvas size frames to work on later if I need to but the animation file itself will be smaller.

Good luck! :)

[egerie]

I second what ikken said, especially the part about h.264.

[scootly]

always export your animation as PNG sequence once you're done animating in flash,
import the image sequence into premiere/AE and from there export your file as video
I can't say if 55 mb is a lot or not - it will depend on resolution;
you may use h.264 codec to achieve both fine quality and smaller filesize, but only use it when exporting the final movie, use image sequences for any inbetween work.


and by the way, your source files could take a lot of space - when I was rendering my demoreel, 1 minute (1440 frames @ png @ 1280:720 px) of animation took 1,5 GB on the HDD.

This is very helpful! Thanks a bunch! Also, I figured out that you save space in Flash by converting the images to symbols. However, I think it only makes sense to do that if your going to produce and finish the final product in Flash.

Am I right? At any rate its a big relief to know I'm going about this right. Just need to figure out the tweaks.

[QQQ]

I would also recommend when exporting your png's from Photoshop crop them down to the smallest size you can. The larger the canvas around it the larger the file size.
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