I'm rendering out the animation for 3_05_55 and I am getting over 5 meg file even with everything turned off and the quality set at low. What's up with this?

Are you rendering to .mov - Sorenson 3 format?

Funny thing, though, I mentioned a couple of scenes ago that my scene was over 3mb, when I'm used to them being 1-2mb. I thought it was probably because I had lots of characters in them doing stuff.

If you are using Sorenson 3, (24fps, keyframe every 200 frames, medium quality), and your file sizes are still getting larger than you would expect then I would guess that you have a very busy image with very few areas of continuous colour of the same value. This is to be expected as the textures and lighting become more complex and where the camera is moving.

When file sizes get too large for posting I usually change the resolution to half of the final dimensions and that brings down the file size and speeds up rendering. You can then double the viewing size in your QT A/V Controls panel if you want it to display at the correct size. Of course it is always going to be a trade off between picture quality and file size.

I use MPEG-4 Video, key every 10 frames, quality "Low." This seems to consistently create smaller files

Yeah, I thought sorenson3 was rendering larger myself. I'm going to test it by rendering a an old shot and comparing the file sizes. Be back in a bit.

Edit: Nope. Seems to be rendering the same sizes. Some of my recent animations must have been more colorful/longer/etc. I also tested Martins setting and it produces a file half the size with not much quality difference.

I'll take up Martin's settings. I used to use Sore3 too... I wouldn't mind smaller file sizes.

(So long as everyone has an MP4 codec, we shouldn't have an issue using it. )

I think I'll switch to Martin's settings.