Saving and Exporting Movies

Corel Painter provides several options for saving and exporting your finished movies.

Some file formats (like QuickTime and Video for Windows) have compression options available.

Exporting a Single Image from a Movie

To export a frame as a single image

1. Display the frame you want to export in the image window.

You can click on the frame thumbnail in the Frame Stacks palette or use the controls in the Frames Stacks palette to display the frame.

2. Choose File menu > Save As. The Save Movie dialog appears.
3. Select Save current frame as image.
4. In the Save dialog box, choose a location and file format, enter a name for the file, and click Save.

Exporting Movies as QuickTime Movies

You can export a movie as a QuickTime movie on either the Macintosh or Windows platform.

QuickTime supports several compression schemes. The following descriptions should help you choose one; however, you'll probably want to experiment with different compressors and settings to identify the best settings for your work. You may also have additional compression methods available.

• Animation-this compression method works well with areas of continuous tone. If you set Quality to Best and make every frame a key frame, this compressor is lossless. For most Corel Painter animations, this compressor is a good choice.
• Cinepak®-this method produces acceptable motion and image quality at remarkably small file sizes. It is the preferred format for CD-ROM delivery and transfer across the Internet. Cinepak can take a long time to compress, and it can be difficult to find the best compression settings for certain image types and frame rates.
• Graphics-this method is limited to 256 colors. It compresses the file at a greater ratio than the Animation compressor, but does not play as quickly.
• None-with this setting, no compression is used, so the images retain all of their quality. With a large frame size, some computers might not be fast enough to play at a high frame rate.
• Photo-JPEG-JPEG is an international standard for image compression. It allows high compression ratios while maintaining excellent image quality. However, it does not play at high rates.
• Video-this method is designed for recording and playing back digitized video at high rates. Because of the spatial compression method it uses, the Video compressor does not provide great results for images with large areas of continuous tone, such as those in most animations.

The compression ratio is inversely proportional to image quality. The Quality slider allows you to set an optimum level between the amount of compression and image quality. For most work in Corel Painter, you'll want Quality set to High.

Frames per second controls the speed of display. Specify the number of frames you want displayed per second.

Key frames are used in temporal compression methods. Each key frame is stored in its entirety. The next set of frames-up to the next key-are saved only as changes. With some compression methods, you can specify the frequency of key frames with the Key Frame Every option.

With some compression methods, you can also limit the speed of data transmission with the Limit Data Rate option. The data rate limit overrides the Quality setting, if necessary, to keep the compressed movie within the set limit.

To export a Corel Painter movie as a QuickTime movie

1. Choose File menu > Save As.
2. In the Save Movie dialog box, enable the Save Movie as QuickTime option.
3. In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, choose a location, enter a name for the file, and click Save.
4. In the Compression Settings dialog box, choose a compression method from the pop-up menu.
5. Specify the options you want.

Exporting a Movie as an AVI Movie (Windows)

If you are using a Windows system, you can export your movie as an AVI movie.

AVI supports several compression schemes. The following descriptions should help you choose one; however, you'll probably want to experiment with different compressors and settings to identify the best settings for your work. You may also have additional compression methods available.

• Cinepak produces acceptable motion and image quality at remarkably small file sizes. It is the preferred format for CD-ROM delivery and transfer across the Internet. Cinepak takes a long time to compress, and it can be difficult to find the best compression settings for certain image types and frame rates.
• Indeo® Video R3.2 is capable of full-motion playback on systems with a hardware compression accelerator.
• Microsoft Video 1 is designed for recording and playing back digitized video at high rates.
• Full Frames (Uncompressed) uses no compression, so the images retain all of their quality. With a large frame size, some computers might not be fast enough to play at a high frame rate. This is the preferred format for transferring Corel Painter movies to AVI-editing applications.

The compression ratio is inversely proportional to image quality. The Compression Quality slider allows you to set an optimum level between the amount of compression and image quality.

Key frames are used in temporal compression methods. Each key frame is stored in its entirety. The next set of frames-up to the next key-are saved only as changes. With some compression methods, you can specify the frequency of key frames with the Key Frame Every option.

With some compression methods, you can also limit the speed of data transmission with the Data Rate option. The data rate limit overrides the Quality setting, if necessary, to keep the compressed movie within the set limit.

To export a Corel Painter movie as an AVI movie

1. Choose File menu > Save As.
2. In the Save Movie dialog box, enable the Save Movie as AVI option, and specify the number of frames per second.
3. In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, choose a location, enter a name for the file, and click Save.
4. In the Video Compression dialog box, choose a compression method from the Compressor pop-up menu.
5. Specify the options you want.

For some compression methods, you can press Configure to specify additional options.

Working with Numbered Files

Corel Painter supports importing and exporting numbered files. Numbered files are any series of files that are the same size and resolution, and named following a specific style, which includes a number at the beginning or end of each file name. For example, the first frame might be called Movie01, the second frame Movie02, and so on.

When you export a movie as numbered files, you can import the numbered files into an application that may not support other movie formats.

When exporting, you specify the filename for the first file. You must include zeroes so that all numbered files have the same number of digits. For example, if you are creating numbered files from 1 to 24, include "01" in the filename. If you are creating numbered files from 89 to 110, include "089" in the filename.

Importing numbered files is an excellent method of bringing an animation from another 3D or animation program into Corel Painter.

When importing numbered files, the file format must be supported by Corel Painter, and the number of digits in each filename must be the same.

When you import numbered files, you create a new frame stack, and you are prompted to choose a number of onion skin layers and a storage type. For more information, refer to "Creating a Movie".

To export a movie as numbered files

1. Choose File menu > Save As. The Save Movie dialog appears.
2. Select Save movie as numbered files.
3. In the Save dialog box, choose a location and file format, enter a name for the first file, and click Save.

You must begin or end the filename with a number-for example, "01Movie" or "Animation14."

To import numbered files

1. Choose File menu > Open.
2. In the Open dialog box, enable the Open Numbered Files check box.
3. Select the first numbered file.
4. Double-click the last numbered file. You can also select it and click Open.
5. In the Enter Movie Name dialog box, choose a location to save the imported movie, enter a filename, and click Save.
6. In the New Frame Stack dialog box, choose a number of onion skin layers and a storage type.
7. Click OK. Corel Painter sequences the images into the frames of a new frame stack.