Is there a limit to the number of colours that a Pencil2D pallette can contain?
Practically speaking no. I would guess you would probably run into problems with 100M+ palette items. But with ~16M youâd already have one of every color Pencil2D can represent.
File formats allowed to be saved using Pencil2D Discord.
Why doesnât the Pencil2D Team allow users to upload .MP4 files. Is is a matter of file size, or the fact that most players will pay the sounds attached.
I wanted to examine the work of a Member of Pencil2D, as artistic inspiration.
Because it was stored as a .GIF file, I could not pause it to examine individual frames or how these frames worked together to produce the overall effect. When the animation was stopped, it always stops showing the first frame, frame 0.
This is because when the .GIF format was devised, in the early days of the Internet, they were used almost exclusively as animated logos.
This is because you can grab attention, by adding movement to an image, and even then âeyeballsâ was the name of the game.
After some experimentation I found that you can import the images, held within a .GIF file, into a bitmapped layer.
Youâll have to experiment, to set the Camera size correct.
At this point, however you are not home & dry, because some video players allow the user to pause at any point, they insist on looping the viewing experience.
Again by experiments, I found that the player, in Firefox allows non looping mode to be selected. Thus I was able to fully examine the video of interest.
This has been an interesting challenge and a dive onto Internet history.
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Incidentally the project used as a demonstration in the last posting. I was awarded a distinction grade.
Thingâs are obvious, when theyâre pointed out to you! The menu option might be worded in the way, that it is because the option allows other animation file formats to be loaded into Pencil2D using it?
Why doesnât the Pencil2D Team allow users to upload .MP4 files. Is is a matter of file size, or the fact that most players will pay the sounds attached.
Iâm assuming youâre asking about posting MP4s here as you can already post MP4s on the Discord server (and thatâs all decided by Discord, not us). I will bring up the with the main website administrator, but canât promise anything.
As you mentioned, there is a file size concern. Bandwidth is also a concern with users trying to play large videos. Though the max upload file size can be limited, and similar arguments could be made for GIFs and pclx files, which we already allow. The big thing that separates MP4s though is that streaming videos is actually quite complicated to do well. Uploading your video to YouTube or another video sharing site and linking to it or embedding it here would generally be preferable. That way the burden of serving the video is on YouTubeâs servers and not ours, and visitors can take advantage of the many features such websites have that we would not be able to offer. For example, you seem like you would be interested in navigating frame-by-frame through a video, which is something anyone can do on YouTube with the comma and period keys, but which likely is not a feature of your web browserâs built-in video player.
That option used to be called âAnimated GIFâ import, however we changed it because it now supports importing animated WEBP files as well. The distinction we make between animated image formats and videos is that only the latter supports audio tracks. There are also technical differences behind-the-scenes on how animated images are imported vs videos.
You can usually find out what formats can be opened/imported by trying it out. The file selector dialog that comes up should list somewhere which file extensions are supported. I donât know exactly where this is on Windows, but on Linux it usually looks something like this:
Thank you scribblemaniac for your answers, youâve given me much to think about!
Now I know about webp formats, both single image and animated versions, I can now search for and find extensive information.
This includes how to generate, convert and use these images.
I have used Pencil2D extensively, but I didnât realise that you could load and save files in .WEBP format.
The above was, I think, because I was focused on using .PNG and not the .JPG format.
I had done work using .HEIF and other associated formats, but not the .WEBP which is implemented in Pencil2D.
I know what curiosity did to the cat, But my understanding from my research is that a .WEBP file is a single image and a .WEBM file is a video file, which can contain animation.
The file below is a .WEBP format file.
I can load this file using Import Image option on the topline menu.
The Import Animated Image seems to only allow .GIF and .WEBP formats.
Am I misunderstanding something?
The file below is the .GIF file.
The WEBP is an image format that supports animation similar to GIFs. Itâs superior to GIFs in every way except for adoption. It is still not widely used. Pencil2D supports exporting to WEBP, but only as a static image, not with animation. Importing supports both static and animated WEBP images.
Hereâs an example of an animated WEBP image (source):
So, what we are left with is a format which only plays on limited number of browsers and video players and although you can upload it to the Pencil2D Discord group doesnât play.
The Webp format is only useful on a storage system, which I control, if I understand the limitations! For example my PC! Or I stick to using it only for single images.
The file shown above is an animation, but so far I havenât found a suitable player?
To produce this file, I exported it from Pencil2d as a .MP4 format file. And then convert it using Handbrake! You should reuce the file size by between 30 and 50 percent.
Examine the previous posting, to see what you should be seeing!
If you export the animation as a .WEBM format it plays on
player.
My conclusion is that the best option is to use .MP4 files because these are generally smaller, in my experience than the same animation as a .GIF file.
They work with the vast majority of browsers and video players and can uploaded to the Discord server.
This is an unfortunate situation, what we have us 2 systems which offer smaller file size, but are totally incompatible with each other. An require the use of different browsers to access Discord and up or down load files.
The .WEBP format for single images and sequence of images does work.
The website that describes the different formats, I presume wraps the images in an .XML file which contains HTML code. Ther is some possibility of using this, but this may require significant work to acheive.
This has been an interesting exercise. Discord can handle .WEBM file format, but currently the only way to generate these, is to export from Pencil2d and then convert, say using Handbrake.
Still for now, I required to complete my animation project and hand it in to my tutor.
Pencil2D can export WEBM files using the Export > Movie option. You just have to select the WEBM format rather than MP4 when choosing where to save the file to.
Thank you Scribblemaniac, there too much grass, so I cannot see the trees!
But I donât know how to import the .WEBM files into the Pencil2D Discord? Because this would save disk space within the Pencil2D Discord allocation.
The more I look at what both .WEBP and WEBM can do, and what software they can be played on, this situation reminds me of the VHS mess of the late 1980âs.
There were 2 companies that devised solutions, which technically were wiz, but nobody adopted their technology. We continued with VHS technology.
Currently I think the best solution is .MP4 files because they are playable on the vast majority of players and browsers!
Perhaps Google and Apple are just aiming to force Internet users to use their browsers! Their aim of course in Internet dominance.
If so look back at history, where are Altovista today, the answer is nowhere, their Internet business when bust because they didnât innovate!
I have a project file called Guilani-5. Below is the export file as .GIF, .MP4 and .WEBM. For this file the .WEBM is the largest.
I can see that optimisation is possible using a program such as Handbrake.
Here is the animation that I am currently working on for a college assignment.
It still requires some editing. It is a Pencil2D vector animation. I like drawing using vector because it suites my drawing style. The first drawing package I used at college was Illustrator and later at home and college I used Inkscape.
The file below is a sample of a vector animation project in Penci2D.
Sample.pclx (495.7 KB)
This is included, so that if your intregued you can examine it!
Until today I didnât realise that you could export .APNG files from Pencil2d.
The files size of the .MP4 and the .WEBM are for this example within 0.1 K.
Perhaps passing the files through Handbrake would reduce their size?
The file used is Non_Bounce-4.pclx (46.0 KB)
Perhaps these file sizes might be more significantly different, if the project was a bitmapped one!
Iâm pleased to report that all these files play, when the files are dropped into Microsoft Edge browser.
I think that the simular files sizes may be the result, of artists who use vector, using a small number of flat colours. These only require a single byte for each colour use!
Currently the Pencil2D Discord group doesnât allow the posting of .MP4, .WEBM or .APNG files.
I was interested in what MarySmith has said, so I took the Non_Bounce-4.pclx and I converted the images to bitmapped.
This file has both vector and bitmapped images included BitMapped.pclx (176.7 KB)
The sizes of the export files is shown below.
It makes interesting reading!
If you use a small number of Disney style frames with flat colours, then the .MP4 file is the smallest and the .AVI the largest. I suspect that if you use a more painterly style then the results would be similar to Scribbemaniacâs figures.
You can convert .MP4 files into .HEVC, but using online conversion software I had no control over frame size or frame speed. The result is that the resolution was reduced from 720p - 1280 x 720 was reduced to 800 x 600 and the frame speed was set to 30 fps, with no facility to change it. My .MP4 file was 24 frames per second.
My usual browser Firefox refused to play the .HEVC file, but VCL Player did.
So whatâs my conclusion, Iâm going to stick with .MP4 because for my type of animation it produces the smallest file size and I have full control over the output.
I think, that the difference between the different file types is the number of bytes per pixel, when comparing .JPG or .PNG and more recently developed file types.
If you drawing style uses a very few colours, then the more modern file formats, like .WEBP, .WEBM and .HEVC will not reduce the filesize significantly.
If your project included for example a photograph as a back scene, then the file type choosen to save the output video would be significant!