Construct Animate provides a Video export option that lets you get a video file with your animation. It can encode faster than realtime, so assuming you have a fast enough device, you won't have to wait 5 minutes to export a 5 minute video - it could export significantly quicker.
Exporting a video will include an audio track with all audio playback from your project in the video file. However if the project does not include the Audio plugin, the exported video file will not include an audio track at all.
An alternative to exporting videos is exporting image sequences, which produces a list of individual image files for each frame of the animation.
Transparency
Currently Construct Animate's video export option does not support exporting videos with transparency. However you can still get a video with transparency by using the Image sequence export option and then using the FFmpeg tool to encode the image files to a video with transparency. See the guide Exporting videos with transparency in Construct Animate for more details.
General options
The general video export options are:
- Duration: how long the exported video should be, in seconds. You may want this to match the duration of the longest timeline in your project, or adjust it to include or exclude some other animated content.
- Framerate: how many frames per second the exported video should have. This defaults to 30 frames per second. Many displays refresh at 60 Hz, so while it is possible to have more than 60 frames per second, it is unlikely to be broadly useful.
- Format: choose the container format of the video file. This can be either MP4 - a universally supported format, but which has some limits on its permitted usage in some circumstances - or WebM, which is still widely supported if not as much as MP4, and is a free open format with no restrictions on its usage. Changing the video format affects which video and audio codecs are available in the advanced settings. MP4 videos default to using H.264/AAC and WebM videos default to using VP9/Opus.
Advanced options
These options let you customise the format and quality of the exported video. The available codec options can vary depending on the browser, the device, and the chosen video format.
- Video codec: the codec used to encode the video. This determines the specific way that video frames are compressed, and can affect the quality and file size of the resulting video. The codec choice can also affect compatibility with other software, since not all video players support all video formats. When using the WebM format the video codec can be VP8, VP9 or AV1; when using the MP4 format the video codec can be H.264 or AV1.
- Video bitrate: the video data rate in kilobits per second (kbps). Higher values will improve the video quality but increase the file size and take longer to process. The exported video uses a variable bitrate to allow adapting the quality to the content, so this value is treated as an average over time.
- Audio codec: the codec used to encode the audio (if present). This determines the specific way that the audio track is compressed. This contributes to the sound quality and resulting file size, but the audio data tends to make a much smaller contribution to the file size than video. The codec choice can also affect compatibility with other software, since not all players support all audio formats. When using the WebM format currently the only supported audio codec is Opus; when using the MP4 format the audio codec can be Opus or AAC.
- Audio bitrate: the audio data rate in kilobits per second (kbps). Higher values will improve the sound quality, and somewhat increase the file size and take longer to process (although usually to a much lesser extent than video). The exported video uses a variable bitrate to allow adapting the quality to the content, so this value is treated as an average over time.
Container format
Video files typically involve three different data formats: the video codec, the audio codec, and a container format that holds metadata and wraps the video and audio tracks so they can be played together.
Currently Construct supports exporting videos in the WebM or MP4 container formats. WebM and the codecs it uses (VP8, VP9, AV1 and Opus) are open formats with no restrictions or fees for its use. MP4 is typically used with H.264/AAC formats, which are patent-encumbered formats and may involve restrictions on their use in some cases; however MP4 can also be used with AV1 and Opus, which are also open formats. If you need a video in another format, see the section on transcoding below.
Exporting
When the export process starts, it opens a popup window to do the encoding. If you see a message about a popup being blocked, make sure you allow popups. You may also need to re-start the export.
The popup window will display the progress and show a thumbnail of the current frame being encoded. Depending on the performance of your system and the encoding parameters, it should be possible for the export to progress significantly faster than real-time speed, so it should take much less time than the video duration.
When encoding finishes, the popup window automatically closes and the result is shown in a dialog. This includes a link that can be clicked to download your exported video file, a link to immediately share it to another app, and also a preview of the exported video so you can easily review the result.
Transcoding
You may wish to get a video file in a format Construct cannot currently directly export. There are many free tools available that are able to transcode (i.e. convert) videos from one format to another.
Searching the web should allow you to quickly identify some suitable third-party tools. For example searching for convert webm to ogv will help you find ways to convert a WebM file that Construct produced to an OGV (Ogg Video) file if you need that for compatibility with some specific tool.
There are also third-party software tools that can provide conversion tools. One such tool is VLC media player. Once installed, choose the menu option Media►Convert / Save... and follow the steps to convert a video file to a format of your choice.
There is also FFmpeg, a very powerful industry-standard tool. The basic usage is on the command line. As an example the following Windows command can convert a WebM video to MKV (Matroska) format:
./ffmpeg.exe -i video.webm output.mkv
FFmpeg can even convert to animated image formats like APNG, animated WebP and GIF. It's an advanced tool with dozens more options and customisations possible, suitable for advanced users who want precise control over all the possible video encoding parameters.