Recording for Playback on NTSC and PAL Video

Both NTSC and PAL television systems use interlaced video. This means that each frame actually consists of two fields. Each field contains half of the frame scan lines, and only a single field is refreshed in each scan. An NTSC screen that displays 30 frames per second, displays 60 fields per second.

When recording a script, you have the option to render each frame in two passes, with the second pass half a frame ahead of the first one, and then interlace the images from the two passes such that the resulting frame matches the field refresh rate of the display system. This technique, known as field rendering, effectively doubles the apparent refresh rate of the recorded sequence, from 30 to 60 fields for NTSC and from 25 to 50 fields for PAL.

Recording Scripts on Networked Systems

When you record an animation from a script, an animation settings file (".asf") is created to hold the open script's settings and recording status. This makes it possible to easily record the script on networked systems.

The settings file is stored in the same directory in which the animation frames are saved. The default root filename is the same as the design filename. The settings file is not deleted after recording is completed in case any frames need to be re-rendered.

Recording Notes

Following are general notes that relate to recording and previewing:

• Where objects move quickly in a sequence, motion blur can be used to give them a smooth and more realistic appearance of motion.
• Clear Pattern/Bump Maps Between Frames should be turned on where you have a number of different pattern images used between frames, where you are using a large number of very big animated patterns, or where you use many different images of RPCs. In some cases this can cause many more images to be loaded into memory than when just rendering an individual frame, and could use up all your system's memory resources.