/Explain particular techniques that are used to minimise the file size of animations

How to minimise the size of an animation

 

There are various formats of files which range from .avi for video files and .jpg in terms of image files and each is different in the size and quality. When creating an animation, lots of layers, frames and images are utilised it. When finished, the final size usually is quite substantial.

 

Image quality can be reduced to compress the file but this does mean there will be a loss in the overall quality. If retaining the high quality is required then it may be useful to looking into lossless compression where in some cases can reduce file size, yet keep the high quality.

 

Frame disposal – This approach utilises a software such as Adobe Photoshop to reduce its file size through removing unnecessary frames which are declared unrequired for the final animation. It removes the current frame when the next frame is played. This restricts previous frame images from appearing in repeated frames. If this is initiated, then it will remove the previous frames after they have been played, thus reducing the time needed to play the frame as well as the overall file size, as less data needs to be stored at once. A disadvantage to using this is that it may remove frames that will be noticeable which means not the ideal method for high quality animations.

 

Frame disposal was utilised here to remove the extra giraffes so that only one giraffe is in each frame rather than it increasing by one each frame. This will reduce the file size even though the giraffe is still visibly present.

 

 

 

Auto crop – This method allows you to remove everything from the frame except the image(s) and allow to keep that isolated so that it appears more natural and easier on the eyes. This means arears such as white space can be removed since they are not required. This allows for the final image size to be reduced as less colours and overall data is needed to be stored. However, a downside to auto crop is that it may automatically delete parts of the image which were meant to be kept.

 

Resolution – The higher the resolution, the more pixels have to be stored in the file, which leads to increasing the file size significantly. If you want to keep the file size to a minimum, then a resolution must be chosen where the quality is good enough for the animation and its images but at the same time not too high so the file size drastically rises.

 

Frame Rate – increasing the frame rate allows an animation to run much smoother, but this comes at a cost being a higher file size therefore you have to be conscious of the limit you can have in terms of file size yet have a good frame rate.

Sound – If your animation is accompanied with sound then of course this will increase the file size since there is now more data than without sound and the more sound implemented then the higher the file size travels. Therefore, you have to consider whether you can sacrifice more file size for sound within your animation.