Exporting and rendering output

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. You made a beautiful animation, but your friend cannot open the Synfig file. Why? Because it is still a project, not a video. Today we will learn how to render it into a GIF, a video or images that anyone can play.

First, know the two kinds of files. The project file is saved as dot sifz, and it opens only in Synfig. In the project file, you can still edit the layers and waypoints. The output file is a GIF, a video or a set of images. Anyone can play the output on a phone or a computer, but they cannot edit its layers.

Rendering means producing the final output from the project. Synfig calculates every single frame of the animation. Each frame becomes a finished picture with all its layers joined. Then the frames are saved into the chosen file type. A long scene with many layers takes more time, so be patient.

Many students confuse preview and render. A preview is a quick look at the animation inside Synfig. It can be lower quality, and it creates no file to share. Render makes the real output file on your computer. So, always preview first to catch mistakes, then render once.

Now let us open the render window. First, save your project, so no work is lost. Open the File menu and choose Render. The Render Settings window opens. Here we set the filename, the target and the quality.

The target tells Synfig what kind of file to make. If the target is Auto, Synfig decides from the extension you type, like dot gif. The gif target makes a looping animation, good for short clips and web pages. The ffmpeg target makes a video such as dot MP4 or dot AVI, if ffmpeg is installed. The png target saves every frame as a separate PNG image.

The settings window also has Image and Time tabs. Width and height give the size of the output in pixels. Frame rate is the number of frames per second. Start time is where the output begins. End time is where the output stops, so you can render only a part of the scene.

Two more settings decide how good the output looks. In Synfig, a smaller quality number means better quality. Better quality takes more time to render. Anti-aliasing smooths the jagged, step-like edges of curves and slanted lines. A smart habit is to test with low quality, and make the final render with high quality.

Let us render step by step. First, save the project as a dot sifz file. Next, open File, then Render. Type the filename ball dot gif, so Auto picks the GIF target. Then set the size, the time and the quality. Click the Render button, and watch the status bar until it says the file is rendered.

Let us calculate the total number of frames. One second at twenty four frames per second gives twenty four frames. Five seconds at twenty four frames per second gives one hundred twenty frames. Five seconds at twelve frames per second gives only sixty frames, which renders faster but looks less smooth.

Pause and predict. The target is png. The length is two seconds. The frame rate is twenty four frames per second. How many frames are there in two seconds? Forty eight frames, and Synfig saves one PNG file for each.

Here is one more handy option. The Render Settings window has a tick box called Render current frame only. When it is ticked, Synfig saves just the frame at the time cursor as one still image. This is useful for a poster, a cover picture or a thumbnail for your video.

Choose the format that fits the need. To share a clip on a phone, choose an MP4 video, because it plays almost everywhere. To show a short loop on a web page, choose GIF. To edit the frames later in other software, choose PNG frames. For a poster or cover picture, render one PNG frame.

Watch out for four common mistakes. Some students render but never save the dot sifz project, and lose their editing work. A wrong end time cuts the animation short. Some forget to raise the quality before the final render. And the video target fails if ffmpeg is not installed, so use GIF or PNG instead.

Let us revise what we learned today. The dot sifz file is the project, and the output is a GIF, a video or PNG images. Rendering turns every frame into the output file. Use File, Render, and set the filename, target and quality. In Synfig, a smaller quality number gives better output. And total frames equal seconds multiplied by the frame rate.