Most of the 3D packages are offering a lot of file output formats for your renderings. So you may wondering which one is the best output format. Especially beginners can get confused here.
Here are a few tips for you:
If you want to create a high quality output, the most important point is to render to an uncompressed format. Don't use compressed formats like jpeg. I prefer to render my scenes to uncompressed „tif“ files. If I want to present my work on the web or another medium where file size is important, I convert the rendering sith a seperate tool like „XnView“. If you are rendering to tif format, be sure to uncheck the compression setting, which may be checkd by default in the output otions dialogue.
Another point is the output size. My tip: render large – you can downsize the image later. If I want to create an image with 800x600 pixel, I render the double size fist. In this case my output file is 1600x1200. Downsizing it later with e.G. XnView gives me some „extra anti-aliasing“. This comes in handy, when you notice some unwanted artefacts in your rendering.
With the tips above you should be able to create some high quality still renderings.
But what's about animations?
As with still renderings, most programs offer you various output formats for animations. But which one is the best ?
If you want to edit the animation later – especially when you want to add some effects – the best way is to render the whole animation as a sequence of images. As for still images: uncompressed files have a better qualtity. So I prefer to render a sequence of uncompressed tif files.
You can load the sequence later in a video editing program an export it to a video format later.
If you do not want to edit the file later and want to export it as an video file directly from your 3D application, there are a lot of formats available. Keep in mindm, that maybe someone who is on a mac computer can't open a file which has been created as a Video for Windows file (avi). So I recommend to use the quicktime (mov) format. For all formats there are a lot of codecs available. Use a codec, where you can edit the compression rate. Low compression settings will result in a better quality, but it will result in larger files too. You have to find a compromise here.
Create a small animation scene and render it with different compression settings. Compare how increased qualtity settings will increase your file size. Try to find out a setting, where the size is still small enough with good quality. Mabe you shoud do different renderings: One rendering for a Web version with higher compression and one high quality rendering.
My favorite is the MPEG4 with the high quality setting compressor.
If you have further questions, have a look at the forum.
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Most of the 3D packages are offering a lot of file output formats for your renderings. 
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