The Animation codec is a fast losslessQuicktimevideo codec created by Apple Computer to enable playback of RGB video in real time without expensive hardware. It is one of the few video codecs that support an alpha channel. It also supports color depths from 1 to 32 bit. The Animation codec uses run-length encoding, and as such works well for traditional 2-D animation where there are large areas of constant color. For complex 3D rendered scenes or digitized film of real-world footage, it barely compresses at all.
