Lets you save individual frames or a complete sequence of frames (depending on what is selected in the History tab). The Picture Viewer can also be used as a video conversion tool to save videos in other resolutions, codes anc formats. Anamorphe videos are also supported.

When the command is called up a dialog window will open in which additional parameters are made available:

Note that when saving videos they will be compressed using "Codecs" (e.g., H.264) which will cause the image quality to diminish. This is why professionally created animations are almost always rendered in an uncompressed format (e.g., TIFF) as a basis for use in video editing or compression applications (e.g., Adobe After Effects, etc.). These applications generally use sophisticated video compression techniques (e.g., "2 pass encoding") to ensure optimal video quality (notwithstanding the far-reaching possibilities offered by Multi-Pass rendering for creating various render effects such as shadows and depth of field.

This type of workflow bears the advantage that it outputs the rendered sequence uncompressed and in the best possible qualitative state. Furthermore, various Codecs can be tested using the original images (applying additional Codecs to already compressed videos is not recommended since the image quality would further be reduced).

Rules of thumb:

• If an animation is to be edited using an external application it should be saved in the form of an uncompressed sequence of images (or as an uncompressed video - which will result in very large video files).
• For test purposes or if no subsequent editing will take place, a video compression Codec that lessens image quality can be applied.

Type

Depending on what is selected in the History tab’s list, the following parameters will be made available:

Still Image

Only a single image will be saved (regardless of how many images or sequences are selected in the History tab’s list).

Animation

This option is made available if more than one image is selected in the History tab’s list. The From and To values can then be used to define the frame range that should be saved as an animation.

Selected Frames

Selecting this option will save the selected frames (regardless of whether individual images, complete sequences or images within a given directory are selected) as an animation (i.e. sequentially numbered).

Format/Options

Here you can select an image or video format. Details about these formats and their respective setings can be found here.

Depth

See Depth.

Name

See Name.

Save settings.>

Stereo

The following images can be rendered using the Render Settings’ Stereoscopic tab:

• left camera view (Single Channel = 4)
• right camera view (Single Channel = 2)
• the resulting stereoscopic image (Merged Stereoscopic Image)
• non-stereoscopic image (Non-Stereoscopic Image)
• any number of camera views between the left and right camera views (Single Channel X)
• the Stereoscopic tab also offers the Individual Channels and Merged Image option

This is a large range of views, which can, of course, be applied to each animation frame. Depending on the view chosen, different options can be modified.

Layers

This option should only be selected if layers exist or if saving to an image format capable of working with layers (e.g., PSD, B3D or TIFF, etc.). If enabled, all existing layers (Multi-Pass, alpha channels, etc.) will be saved. If disabled, the result will reflect the options selected in the Layer tab:

• Image or Multi-Pass: The image will be reduced to a single layer and saved.
• Single-Pass: Only the selected layer will be saved.

Alpha Channel

If the image being saved contains an alpha channel, this option will determine whether or not it will be used.

Use Filter (flatten layer)

If a filter is activated in the Filter tab, enabling this option will ensure that the filter will affect the image to be saved. If this option is not enabled, filters will be ignored (i.e. have no effect).

Note that the filter will only affect the original rendered image and will not affect Multi-Passes. Since the Multi-Passes will then no longer match the original image, they will be omitted.

Sound

When saving to a video format, this option defines whether or not an existing soundtrack should be included. This can work in one of two ways:

• A complete video, including sound, can be loaded into the Picture Viewer.
• An animation, including Sound, can be rendered out.

The frame rate must match the original frame rate exactly. Otherwise no sound can be saved.

From/To

If Animation is selected as Type the frame range that should be saved can be defined using these values.

FPS

Defines the frame rate of the sequence of images to be saved in video format.

Reset to Default

Sets the Format, Depth and FPS parameters back to the state of the images in the History tab’s list. As a result, no conversion will take place when the images are saved because the images will be saved with unaltered parameters.

DPI

See Resolution.