I currently have Krita 5.2.2, and I am unsure what is going on with rendering animations as an MP4. Some days back, I managed to find a way to save short animations (2 - 5 frames long) as an MP4 and at its regular size. I wanted to explain to someone else how to do it by redoing the whole process. I did exactly how I did that time, but the animation would not play at all. All I would get is a black screen when playing the video, and the file’s image before opening it would just show a play button - though the two times I did get it to work showed the first frame of the animation. It works perfectly fine with rendering it as a GIF otherwise.
I tried setting the FPS to 1 frame per second, and it doesn’t work. I tried rendering with the newest PPMpeg in its proper location, and it still doesn’t work. I even changed every filter with the problem still occurring. Is this a glitch or something? I’ll also provide the frames I was using in case its needed (these frames are for nothing serious but to test I know how to render mp4s properly).
Which operating system are you using?
If you’re using Windows, disable One Drive while rendering videos (and also when using the Recorder docker for screen recording and Export rendering).
Disable any file synchronisation clients.
Where did you get krita from?
Where did you get ffmpeg from?
There is no ‘proper location’ but where did you put it?
Try using the VLC player whatever operating system you’re using.
Or drag it onto an open browser window.
When you render as .mp4, do you get any error messages?
Can you post a screenshot of the rendering options as well as the details of the .mp4 options (the icon with three small dots that opens up the detailed options).
Here is the thing for a couple of your questions: First, I am currently using the most updated version of Windows 10 since I don’t have everything to upgrade to Windows 11. Second, I don’t have an account for One Drive, so I am unsure if I even have it enabled. Third, I downloaded Krita from the Krita website (Krita Desktop | Krita) and the latest build of ffmpeg from the Gyan website (Builds - CODEX FFMPEG @ gyan.dev).
When I said proper location, I mean that I redirected the ffmpeg location from the one that comes with 5.2.2 towards the latest build I downloaded it from the previously mentioned Gyan website, making sure to extract the file first. I don’t have the VLC player downloaded on my computer, and I still get the black screen after dragging it to an open browser window. I don’t think I get an error message because it just shows the rendering bar poping up for a short second before closing with another tab closing just a millisecond before it - not able to even know what that was.
Here is the rendering options and the .mp4 options (I had to take a picture with my phone):
I have Windows 10 on a 13 year old desktop and krita 5.2.2 works fine on it, except that it’s slow for large, long and complex animations.
I’ve just made a 32 x 32 10 frame animation and rendered it out to .mp4 with no problems.
I used the built-in krita ffmpeg facility and then the Gyan package of ffmpeg 6.1.1. Both worked with no problem.
Your photo of the screen shows that you are using the krita internal ffmpeg and I used those same settings when I used the internal version.
For the Gyan 6.1.1 package, I used these settings:
The video plays ok in VLC.
If I upload it here then it’s blank, possibly because it’s very small.
Here it is at 320 x 320:
It would be a good idea to learn how to make screenshots.
You press Ctrl+PrtSc (the key at the top right of the keyboard).
Then in krita you do Edit → Paste Into New Image and there it is.
Can you post a full screen screenshot of the entire krita window with your animation open and the Layers docker and Timeline docker fully visible?
What are the Clip Start and Clip End values and are they correct for the animation?
I just wanna tell you that I downloaded the FFmpeg from the link you posted and made sure to set the “FFmpeg location” to the correct exe file in it. The settings you showed are also the same. For all the times I do the animations, I always make sure to set First Frame (or what I think you call Clip Start) to 0 and Last Frame (or what I think you call Clip End) to the last frame of the animation I wanted to render as a mp4. Lastly, here is a screenshot of the Layer and Timeline dockers:
Side Note (this is just after writing the above message): I tried setting both the height and width in the Render window to 320 (as mentioned when you did the test animation), and I can render the animations perfectly fine now - even with the original size of the canvas. Maybe it’s because Krita wasn’t built to render animations with that small of a canvas. I also tried using the VLC, but when I tried playing the render with the original render size of 32x32, all I get is a green square for some reason.
That is strange. I rendered out to 32 x 32 and it played in VLC on Windows 10.
Make a new document of 32 x 32 then do File → Import Video Animation and choose the 32 x 32 .mp4 file. It should import 10 frames of 32 x 32 size but of compressed quality.
Okay, it did properly load all 10 frames of compressed quality, so that does mean the frames somewhat loaded. Also, here is the video I imported the frames from:
Edit: And this is how it looked when I actually managed to render it on those very few occasions.
The video you posted above is 32 x 32 100 frames at 24fps so I don’t know where that comes from.
The first frame looks ok but the following ones are an alternation of the same two images. Anyway…
Here is the .kra file I used and the .mp4 files rendered using the krita internal ffmpeg and also the Gyan 6.6.1 ffmpeg: 32x32-10frames-anim.zip
I know what my computer does but I don’t know what’s going on with yours.
Actually, the frames following the first one is actually copies of two lines actually. I did it that way because I wanted to test to see if I could render them into an mp4. I didn’t wanna go too detailed with testing my ability to render videos.
Also, I think it might be something to do with my computer. When I downloaded the file and played both videos, it basically did the same thing with both the VLC Media Player and Windows Media Player. No idea what’s causing that problem though. Does my video play fine on your end after downloading it and playing it on your media players?
Update: I think I figured out what is going on. After changing up the canvas sizes, it seems my computer is incapable of playing mp4 videos whose canvas size is 32 pixels by 32 pixels, but it can play them if the canvas size is 33 pixels by 33 pixels.
There are strange variations in the abilities of video players and browsers.
My VLC player on Windows 10 can play all the 32 x 32 .mp4 files we’ve discussed so far.
My browsers on Windows 10 can’t play the 32 x 32 .mp4 files but can play 32 x 32 animated .gif files.
My browsers on Linux can play the 32 x 32 .mp4 video files.
The best thing to do, for checking, is to import the .mp4 back into krita to see if all the frames are there.
Why any type of media player or browser can’t play any particular file is a mystery to me.
I’m not going to bother investigating all combinations of output video file format, rendering encoder options, operating system, canvas size and media player. Someone else can try that.
Hi, I am mainly replying to this thread so it doesn’t close. Due to unforeseen circumstances, my computer is currently inoperable due to hardware problems. No idea when it’ll be back up and running so I can get back to creating the pastel brush.
Hopefully, by sometime next month, my computer will be fixed, and I can get back to creating the pastel brush. I apologize for anyone waiting on an update for the brush you are helping me make for personal use.
