Best Animation Settings?

[Spectralis]

I'm planning on rendering an animation but wondered whether it's better to reduce max samples to 500 (instead of the default 2000) and keep the size 1920 x 1080 or keep max samples at 2000 and reduce the size to 720 x 576 (PAL)? I'm hoping to get the fastest possible render with the best quality. The final animation will be a composite part of a widescreen (16:9) video that I plan to release on DVD with an HD version for the internet.

[sikotik13]

Perhaps someone has a technical answer, but I would presume you would be the best judge of what would work better for your scene. I would presume you have done a render at each setting, so which looked better to you?

[Spectralis]

Perhaps someone has a technical answer, but I would presume you would be the best judge of what would work better for your scene. I would presume you have done a render at each setting, so which looked better to you?

HD at 2000 maxsamples definitely looked better than at 500 maxsamples but I'm not sure whether this difference is that noticeable in an animation. I'm trying to decide before I spend days rendering it.

I wondered what difference it would make rendering at SD size at 2000 maxsamples and then upscaling to HD compared to rendering at HD size at 500 maxsamples. Maybe there's a technical reason why this isn't advisable?

[PolderAnimation]

Noise is way more noticeable in movement then in a single image.
500 samples doesn't sound like much, but it depends on you scene, you render kernel (DL, pathtracing or PMC), and shaders. If you are using big reflective surfaces, SSS and lots of lights 500 samples is not enough.

When I render animation 2560 samples is the min, most of the time i go to 4096 samples (in pathtracing).

[Spectralis]

Noise is way more noticeable in movement then in a single image.
500 samples doesn't sound like much, but it depends on you scene, you render kernel (DL, pathtracing or PMC), and shaders. If you are using big reflective surfaces, SSS and lots of lights 500 samples is not enough.

When I render animation 2560 samples is the min, most of the time i go to 4096 samples (in pathtracing).

Thanks for your reply. I'm using the Daylight setting and the scene doesn't have many reflective surface. Fortunately I don't need to have a very realistic look for this scene. I rendered HD at 500 maxsamples and it seems pretty acceptable in this case. It seems a case of trial and error and, as you say, it depends on the scene.