Saver node problems

I am to the point in my project (3D motion graphic) where I need to render a movie clip. However, when I add the saver node, it only gives me options to save as a picture file--no movie format is available. Where have I gone wrong?

on which OS do you work?

on windows you need to have Quicktime installed to render quicktime formats, on OSX (or is it now Apple OS or something else??) this should work out of the box. On Linux there is no video support right now.

best is to render to an image sequence (you can resume the rendering when it fails or just render a part of it) and then use a seperate software (or a second fusion comp) to make a video format out of the images.

Installing Quicktime helped--thanks. However, it just gave me a big grey blob. I suspect I had the renderer and saver in the wrong place. Here's a screen shot of my project (in progress, without renderer and saver). What should I do from here? I don't know if I did the image correctly...

you need a Renderer3D node to "convert"/render the 3d scene into a 2d image. you would connect your "merge3d3" into the renderer3d

the renderer3d then goes into the saver node

Michael, thank you so much. I am such a novice at this! I have managed to create a video. However, my lighting effects are not showing up in the clip. Suggestions?

By default, the Renderer3D does not have Enable Lighting and Enable Shadows turned on. Those switches are near the bottom of the Control panel.

Michael, thanks for your help.