Select AVI Compressor Options

Your software allows to save an image series as an AVI video. Use the Select AVI Compressor Options dialog box to set up the data compression for creating AVI files.

Opening the dialog box

To open the dialog box, load an image series, e.g., a time stack. Select the File > Save As... command. In the Save Image As dialog box, select the AVI Video File (*.avi) entry in the File Type list. Click the Options... button to open the Select AVI Save Options dialog box. Click the Select... button located in the AVI compressor options dialog box to choose another compressor or to change its settings.

Description of dialog box

Selecting a compressor

Select a compression method from the Compressor > Name list. The list offers all compression methods installed on your PC.

Please note that some compression methods are very much specialized on certain image types. Therefore, not every compression method will lead to the same good results. If you are not sure which compression method you should choose, first try the Microsoft Video 1 compression method.

Note: The selected compression method must also be available on the PC that is used for playing back the AVI. Otherwise the quality of the AVI may be considerably worse when the AVI is played back.

Choose the No compression entry from the Compressor > Name list to save the AVI video without compressing it.

A short characterization of the current compression method will be shown in the Comment field. Click the Codec Info... button to have a look at the manufacture information and the version number of that compression method.

Setting the quality of a compressed AVI file

Enter the desired quality of the AVI video into the Compression quality field. The lower the compression quality, the lower the file size of the AVI video. The image quality, however, will also be reduced. The exact correlation between image quality and the image file size depends on the compression method.

Note: You can't set the compression quality for all compressors. If a compressor uses a fixed compression rate, the Compression quality field will not be available.

Selecting key frames

Select the Choose key frame every ... frames check box located in the Options group to write original frames into the AVI video. All of the compressors only save the differences of the current frame compared to the first one, instead of saving whole frames. If several successive frames are calculated this way, the image quality will decrease from frame to frame. This can lead to a decrease in image quality throughout the duration of the AVI video. If key frames are inserted in the AVI video, the loss of quality will be limited.

Enter how often key frames are to be adopted, in the Choose key frame every ... frames field. For example, enter the value 8 in this field to have every 8th frame included in its unchanged form, in the AVI video.

Usually, you will reduce the X/Y-resolution of the image series for the AVI video. Please note that employing key frames will not reduce the loss of data caused by reducing the X/Y-resolution.

1008 20092012