I have found out how to increase movie quality even further. I usually don't use motion blur because I think it blurs too much when you moving fast.

But if you create the movie in pointools @ 60 fps instead of 30, render all images (will be 2 times more images), then converting the movie from 60 back to 30 fps in virtual dub. The result is half the motion blur but with same flicker free quality. You can go even further and render at 90 or 120 fps but it will take time! Make sure that your fps is devidable by 30, or else virtualdub will render frames in between, not good I think.. Also make sure that you change the fps before you start to animate in pointools. If you change afterwards the movie will just be faster.

You also get another advantage of render at 60 fps. If you find out that your movie is too fast, you can always slow it down by changing the source fps in virtualdub. If you go less then 25 fps though the movie will be noticiable lagish.

Se this tutorial http://pointools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=305 for more info about VirtualDub.





EDIT: To save time you could create an animation in pointools with 120 fps but only render every 4:th frame (step=4). The file numbering will be 4,8,12 etc so you can't import those to virtualDub. But as I found out, you can select all files in windows and right click on the first image and choose rename. Put in a base name and all files will be renamed with correct numbers, 1,2,3 etc. This works with windows XP or later. I don't know the limit yet but I have tested with 1200 images and it only took some seconds to process.

I also found another advantage of using motion blur. Many points in the cloud are melted together creating a more smooth surface. This has enormous effect on the encoding. Usually a movie of a point cloud need to be approx 100 times larger than a regular cinema movie due to all uniqe point information. The codec compression level becomes very limited. But with motion blur you can lower then encoding bitrate without loosing quality, which result in lower file size. The following example is not the best but there is a huge difference between 1 and 2 when looking at the complete animation. Resolution is 1280x720 with x264 codec at highest quality.

My optimal setting for 1280x720 pointool animation would be motion blur, 120 fps, encoding at 30 fps @ 8000 kbit/s. For 1920x1080, maybe 20000 kbit/s.

My conclution is: With motion blur you get higher quality and lower bitrate.

1.No blur, 30 fps, 12000kbit/s_______________________________2.No blur, 30 fps, 5000 kbit/s_____________________________3.Blur, 120 fps, 5000 kbit/s