Stream vs Animate vs Process o_0

[NewJack Rasputin]

i am finding the same keyframed paseq giving  very different results depending on the output method employed. animate to movie and process to movie look similar but have different playback speeds - with process source to movie running much faster.

Recording into an open stream (flag write at end of paseq cycle enabled), yields very different results visually. The saturation and path/stroke buildup effects are less extreme - looking very washed-out and delicate in comparison. (in a good way - sorta...) certain watery brushes are entirely transformed dynamically speaking. 

there is obviously something i don't understand - does this ring a bell? 

[Synthetik]

Animate and movie streams are going to key off of the fps timing in the movie codec settings dialog. Process to movie will either use that FPS or the source movie timing depending on the state of the Process Frame Timing movie preference.

[Synthetik]

I would not expect any difference in the visual quality of a movie stream vs a process or animate stream. They use the same code to do the movie frame compression.

Many PASeqs have random components in the individual action steps they use to generate an effect. So running the same PASeq multiple times can generate subtle variations in the individual images generated for a given frame number.

If you have more than one movie stream write flag turned on you would introduce additional output frames and other artifacts. So that could affect the timing as well as what you see in individual output frames.

Many PASeqs do recursive processing,where they modify and overwrite what is on a previously generated frame. So depending on what was in the canvas when you started processing the perceived output effect could be seen as being very different when running a PASeq on the different starting canvases.