Animation codec

The help file "Rendering the animation" says for compression to use the Cinepak Codec by Radius for Windows. My list of compressions is
(Uncompressed)
Logitech Video (I420)
Intel IYUV Codec
Microsoft RLE
Microsoft Video 1
Microsoft YUV
Microsoft YUV
Toshiba YUV Codec
Microsoft YUV
(Yes, Microsoft YUV is there three times.)
For all but
Logitech Video (I420)
Microsoft Video 1
the Configure box is grayed out.

What's the current recommendation?
Are there other codecs that I could install?

I can't say for sure, but these codecs appear rather old. I'd suggest using one like x265, but have no experience with installing that under Windows because I just create frames and then use FFMPEG (download page) to convert them to a video – it's a command-line tool, see this manual for turning pictures into a video. The UF documentation suggests this for "final" renderings, probably because it may appear a bit cumbersome, but once you know your command, it isn't really any more.

All these codecs are quite old unfortunately. Ultra Fractal enumerates them from the Video for Windows subsystem which Microsoft doesn't seem to keep updated anymore. At some point I should look into using a more modern system.

I do recommend to use an external tool to create movie files: this lets you experiment with different compression settings without having to re-render the fractal frames. VirtualDub is nice to use: http://www.virtualdub.org/

Thanks, I did some googling.

Since VirtualDub is free and open source, it has spawned newer versions.

VirtualDub2 (former known as VirtualDub FilterMod) has built-in codecs and can go directly to mp4 video with adjustable quality/compression. It seems quite easy to use and the default parameters worked for me.

Also free and open source, no need to install, just extract from the zip file.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdfiltermod/