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After you solve and add a few test objects, you can render a test movie or sequence with anti-aliasing and motion blur. The movie can then play (in Quicktime Player or Windows Media Player etc) at the full rate regardless of length. Movies can be produced with these file extensions, depending on the platform: ASF(Win), AVI(Win), BMP, Cineon, DPX, JPEG, MP4, MOV (Quicktime), OpenEXR, PNG, SGI, Targa, TIFF, or WMV(Win). Only image sequences are available on Linux.
You can create a movie either from the vantage point of the camera of the active camera or moving object, if the perspective views Lock button is engaged (ie so that the background image is shown, and the view animates with the camera.) Or, if the camera is not locked, the movie will be made from the unchanging current viewpoint of the perspective view.
NOTE : Preview Movie generates images of (undistorted) meshes overlaid over an undistorted version of the images, as potentially affected by Lens Workflow. This is different than Shot/Save Sequence (the image preprocessor output), which can generate simple renders with (distorted) meshes overlaid on the original distorted images. These are two fundamentally different output types; both are useful, so it’s up to you to choose the one appropriate for your use.
To make the movie, either click RENDER on the main mouse toolbar in the perspective view, or right-click in the perspective window to bring up the menu and select the Preview Movie item. Either way, you'll bring up a dialog allowing the output file name, compression settings, and various display control settings to be set. The sequence/movie will be produced at the effective resolution of the images, as affected by the image preprocessor.
Tip : You can set a default file type and compression settings for Preview Movie renders in the Image Output section of preferences. If the Keep last settings button is checked (which it is by default), the preferences will be updated each time you render a preview movie, for use the next time you render. Turn the checkbox off to set a permanent set of defaults.
To change the movie's image resolution, use the Output Resampling options on Output tab of the Image Preprocessor, or the DownRez option on the Rez tab. You should also set the desired Interpolation method on the Rez tab, and some Blur (on Filtering) if the resolution is being reduced. This will reduce artifacts due to the image size change. (Resolution changes are done through the image preprocessor, rather than directly in the render, on the Preview Movie panel, to maximize image quality.)
Usually you will should pick a resolution that results in square pixels, so that the preview will not be stretched or squished horizontally. There is a checkbox for that on the Preview Movie panel; when selected it will convert 1440x1080 to 1920x1080 or 720x480 source to 640x480, for example. However, as described previously, it will produce higher-quality output if you adjust the resolution using the Output Resampling options of the Image Preprocessor instead.
Important : Video codecs often have specific requirements for the size of the image being written, such as a width that is a multiple of 16 or can't be larger than a certain size. These restrictions cannot be determined by SynthEyes; if a preview movie fails to be written, you might double-check the image size and consider a more standard alternative. Similarly, some codecs may only be available with an appropriate operating system, such as ProRes™ 422HQ/LT/proxy requiring macOS 10.15 or later.
SynthEyes can anti-alias and motion blur meshes you have inserted in the scene using SynthEyes. Both are controlled by the Anti-aliasing and motion blur dropdown; motion blur settings start with "MoBlur," the other settings do not motion blur. Shutter angle and phase for perspective view previews are set here; default values are
set in the Perspective portion of the preferences panel. Usually the phase should be minus one half of the shutter angle, so the timing window is centered on the frame. The motion blur settings include anti-aliasing, for frames where the camera/object/mesh is stationary.
Tip: You can't generate preview movies of full-range 360 VR footage. Use Save Sequence from the image preprocessor instead; it can render meshes.
If you are making a Quicktime movie, be sure to bring up the compression settings and select something; Quicktime has no default and may crash if you do not select something.
Also, different codecs will have their own parameters and requirements. Similarly, image files used in a sequence may have their own settings dialog.
Older Tip : The Windows 32-bit H.264 codec requires that the Key every N frames checkbox be off, and the limit data-rate to 90 kb/sec checkbox be off: otherwise there will be only one frame.
Tip : You can burn in the frame number, timecode, or timestamp into preview movies, camera view, and/or the perspective views, as controlled from the right-click/View/Time Burn-in submenu. The settings are shared among all camera and perspective windows, and are initialized at startup from preferences in the Perspective section; they may be altered and are later saved and restored with the scene.
Note that image sequences written from the Preview Movie are always 8 bit/channel. An alpha channel can be written for OpenEXR EXR, PNG, SGI, Targa TGA, and TIFF files (turn OFF right-click/View/Show Image, so it doesn't cover the entire image). If you are trying to save a sequence as part of a lens distortion compensation workflow, you should be using Save Sequence on the Output tab of the Image Preprocessor instead.
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