The media placeholder layer can hold either images, flat color or video files. Use video files to show testimonials, product videos or moving graphic elements.
To prepare video files follow these specifications:
- Videos should be MP4 or JET formats. To learn what JET is, read the section below. JET is the perfered format to use with Idomoo's platform.
Some Quicktime codes will also work, though we don't recommend using them. Quicktime files are heavy and are not designed for the web. If you insist on using Quicktime, test the flow before going live. - Videos should be the same FPS as the scene they are used in. If they aren't, the videos are automatically converted to the correct FPS using frame blending. This slows down final rendering.
- Make the videos the same resolution as the placeholder. If you have no control over this, use the media alignment feature to align the video in the placeholder as needed.
- Pixel aspect ratio is assumed at 1.
- If you need a video with alpha use JET and not MP4, which doesn't support alpha.
- Videos with alpha have to be premultiplied on black. This means their background has to be black, not white or any other color. In After Effects this means the composition background is black.
Uploading video files to Storybuilding Suite is limited to 300Mb per file but should be as small as you can get it. Even if you host videos on your own sever, using videos that are larger in size dramatically impacts render speeds and might even result in video not rendering due to time-out.
The JET File Format
JET is a file format developed by Idomoo. It supports an alpha channel, and is compressed in a similar way to MP4. This makes JET a lighter file format than Quicktime, but that still supports transparency. Idomoo's platform reads this file format very quickly, and using it instead of MP4 or MOV reduces render times by a large margin. We therefor advise to use JET as the file format of choice when preparing video materials.
You can currently only create JET file with After Effects. Here's how:
- After installing Scene Tools you also have to install some Output Modules. You can see these instructions here. The Output Module called Idomoo Video 2.0 renders JET files.
- Drag the videos you want to convert to After Effects' Render Queue.
- Select Idomoo Video 2.0 from the Output Module drop-down menu.
- Choose a name and a location for your output.
- You won't be able to view the videos after creating them, short of using Scene Viewer (Windows with NVidia graphics card only) or uploading to Idomoo's platform and using the asset in a scene.