Encoding - "PNG Not Supported" warning

[jansem1]

I have an image sequence I'm trying to render
Error:

• I am on windows 10
• I have ffmpeg installed and the path set in Loom preferences. I have restarted blender.
  • I have directed the path to the /ffmpeg/, /ffmpeg/bin/, and ~/bin/ffmpeg.exe but they all throw the same error.
  • My ffmpeg path is C:\ffmpeg-2023-06-11-git-09621fd7d9-full_build - Do I need to rename the directory to just 'ffmpeg' or does it not matter?
• I have verified in command prompt that ffmpeg is installed and that .png is an available format viaffmpeg -encoders and and ffmpeg -codecs
  • zlib is also an available encoder. I've read that zlib not being installed can cause ffmpeg to not recognize .pngs, but that's not the case here.
    

Output settings:

• I tried this with the File Format set to .png as well and it throws the same error

Encode image sequence settings:

P.S. This toolset is amazing. It has single-handedly saved a project I've been working on for two months, and I expect to be getting a lot of use out of it on future projects. Thanks so much for making it!

[p2or]

Hi @jansem1,

many thanks for your kind words and your detailed report. I'm glad to hear it's useful to others as well.

Yeah, this should be explicitly mentioned in the documentation, sorry about that. As the warning you receive suggests, Loom does not support encoding png sequences for several reasons, mainly because png has serious issues when it comes to alpha channels and color management. I simply cannot guarantee that the actual output is always correct and I honestly don't want to waste my spare time maintaining that file format, since I personally don't use it in production.

Anyway, I created a new branch to address this issue, removed that Loom blocks the execution in this case and introduced a better warning message. Just download Loom using the green code button over there, reinstall and please report back if you have the time. If more people are interested, we can "enable" or "allow" this permanently and in best case perhaps someone can be found who wants to take care of this.

What do you think? Does this help?

Cheers,
Christian

[jansem1]

That fixed it, thank you so much!