Hi,

I’m sure I’m not alone with my disatisfaction for Quicktime. I wondered if there are any software alternatives anyone could recommend for taking an image series (jpeg, png, etc...) from your batch rendered output, for then to sew, play, and compress into single movie files - avi’s and such.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Max comes with Video Post which is intended for this.  You can use Ram Player as well, which is also part of Max, but it requires enough RAM to hold the images.  You can probably use Windows Movie Maker to do this fairly easily.  You can use VirtualDub to do this, but I think it only saves as AVI.  I’m sure there are other applications on the net that can do this now.  Premiere and Vegas are also applications that many people go to for more professional control.

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=34025

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=image+sequence+to+movie

Maneswar Cheemalapati [FA]

Hmmm.... cool. I have Premier and hadn’t even considered using it. I didn’t realise it’d accept a series of jpegs - I’ve only used it for for DV editing. I’ll have a scout around for that function - surely I don’t have to import frame by frame....  surely!

Thanks for the advice.

And don’t forget Combustion, it is also nearly a part of Max is a bit neglected (from Autodesk as well) but has very reliable editing and rendering tools.

ivan

I was just about to post a similar thread.

The trouble with using premiere or max’ ram player is, if you’re making H.264 movies (which is the codec used by youTube and google and most hd video) you get bad results. Max (at least version 9, maybe they’ve changed for 2008) and premiere (at least cs2, maybe they’ve changed for cs3) use an old implementation of the codec and they wash out the colors and don’t compress as well. Unfortunately, the best encoder I’ve found is quickTime. I too am frustrated with how slow it is and often it crashes.

So I’ll second the op’s question, anyone know of a good H.264 encoder, as good as quickTime, but less buggy? How about the open source X.264 encoders. Anyone have good experiences with them? Or, does anyone know if premiere cs3 or max 2008 have updated their encoder to match quickTimes?

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James Kelly
fo co mo so

When rendering to a sequence image files, use PNG or TGA. Both use lossless compression. I would avoid JPEG as it is lossey and throws out information. No need to degrade the image at the beginning of the process.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

focomoso 04 November 2007 04:17 PM

So I’ll second the op’s question, anyone know of a good H.264 encoder, as good as quickTime, but less buggy? How about the open source X.264 encoders. Anyone have good experiences with them?

I’ve used Super in the past for H264 encoding. The result was much much better than with Quicktime, and it is freeware. You can find out about it here:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Dave

MAX Plugins.de - the database for 3ds max plugins

David Baker 05 November 2007 06:47 AM

I’ve used Super in the past for H264 encoding. The result was much much better than with Quicktime, and it is freeware. You can find out about it here:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Dave

Thanks Dave, I’ll check it out.

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James Kelly
fo co mo so

I’ve tried dling Super 3 times now and the server keeps crapping out at 20%. After looking at the site, confidence is not high.

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James Kelly
fo co mo so

I like using Quicktime. I find the best way is to render all the frames out as TGA’s, then creating the Animation movie using Video Post.

Problems with RAM player is that if you have a large sequence or large files, the RAM will run out as it cannot hold all of the data. So Video Post is the best method i find.

Rendering>Video Post

Click the Add Image Input button, Then Files > then choose the first frame of your TGA’s...then click sequence. This will add all the other frames into the Video Post

The select the .ifl in video post on the timeline, and click Add Image Output event. The Files again...now you can choose what you want the video to be processed as - Choose Quicktime here, and choose the H264 codec or Sorenson 3.

That should render out fine.

I normally use After Effects or Premiere to do any more post production.

Adding the files straight into Premiere is another good way, and yes also Combustion, as it is an Autodesk product - you can do great post production in here with the TGA files especially when you Render to Fields!

Anyway, hope this helps.

pateljay 06 November 2007 08:37 AM

… I find the best way is to render all the frames out as TGA’s, then creating the Animation movie using Video Post.

…

Choose Quicktime here, and choose the H264 codec or Sorenson 3.

That should render out fine.

This does not get around the issue that max’ H.264 encoder is out of date. You’ll get better compression and more saturated colors if you use Quicktime Pro to do the encoding. That’s why we’re looking for an alternative.

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James Kelly
fo co mo so