3ds Max & Adobe Premiere

[Neil Woodhouse]

Greetings,

 

I need some help.

 

I'm on a project that has a v tight deadline and i have an issue with Max & Premiere.

 

I have produced a animation in Max as an .avi file. The animation runs very smoothly on it's own. I have put the animation into Adobe Premiere and added 4 audio files at pints in the animation where the sound is needed.

 

The client wants this Premiere file as an .avi. I have exported the file out of Premiere as an .avi file ( animation with audio ) and the end result is a very, very jerky animation which also seems to pulse. I have run the file on several machines - thinking that it was mine - but the result is the same on all of them.

 

Any ideas guys on how to get round this?

 

I tried to convince the client to have it exported to DVD, but apparently this forms part of a PowerPoint Presentation, thus the need for .avi

 

Regards

 

Neil

[SandmanNinja]

1) how big is the .AVI file? Is it fragmented? Try burning the .AVI to a DVD to make sure it's not fragmented.

 

2) I had a problem with bringing an .AVI into Premiere and I imported the "file" as a sequence of .BMPs (or .TIFs - it's been a while). It ended up working.

 

The jerkiness really sounds like a VERY fragmented file and the player is stuttering trying to get the file loaded properly.

 

Try different .AVI players (Media Player, VLC, Nero, etc)

[RobNJ73]

Could be that the .AVI was compressed on original render from Max, then recompressed from Premier when the audio was added.

 

I'm generally more comfortable rendering image sequences in a lossless format (i.e.: .TIFFs, like Joel stated above) then using the RAM player or, ideally, post software to compile that .TIFF sequence into an .AVI, or whatever compressed video file you need.

[vizfx]

I prefer to render the materials as mov (quick time) files. The advantage is full access to first classs video codecs from the free version of Quick Time, you have even the possibility to export the alpha channel (transparency). For re-editing I use DV avi and for distribution I prefer wmv (windows media video) which has full control to balance the quality/size ratio. Wmv it is based on mpeg4 like DIVX or XVID but it is already installed on Windows XP or Vista.

[SandmanNinja]

Do .WMV files work in an Apple environment?

VLC would probably work there, but I'm just wondering.

[Macer]

What resolution is your avi - over a certain size and an average computer struggles to decode and get the infomation to the screen in time for a smooth result. Was it playing from a local hard drive or a server? This also makes a difference.

 

As mentioned above, I too get good results from importing individual frames into premiere and rendering out the to the desired format. I normally go straight to DVD, or .wmv if its for use on pc, or quicktime.

 

I have had great quality problems re-editing avi's. I think that its mainly to do with decompressing and re-compressing the footage.

[vizfx]

Wmv file works on Mac with the free add-on for Quick Time player from Microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

The playback for 1080p (full HD) wmv files is exceptional even on older computers.

[mahorela]

my first thought would be that you have rendered the animation at say 30 fps and then exported it out of Premiere at a different frame rate. Just make sure your project settings match that of you rendered animation. I have also had problems with premiere and exporting avi, especially with some of the older versions. You might want to try a quicktime export from Premiere.

[Neil Woodhouse]

Thanks for the responses. It turns out that it was a mismatch between what was rendered out in MAX and the way i tried to produce it in Premiere.

 

In MAX i'd rendered out at HD/DV 1024 X 768. I set the project up completely wrong in Adobe. I only realised after i'd had a rustle thru' the help files. I also found that there is a world of difference betwen MS . avi & DV avi.

 

Next i'm going to get my head around all the different types of CODEC that max supports and find out what they do.

 

Again, cheers for all the responses, advice.

 

Neil

[Nic H]

you ureally you should render to tif, tga, png sequences - anything lossless - and then do your compression etc in premiere

 

i always use quicktime, never avi.

[Jim Mann]

Yeah, I have to add to the sentiments about rendering to frames rather than animations. Frames are easier to manage, if you need to re-render a frame, then you just re-render that single frame instead of the whole sequence. You can also render uncompressed or lossless with ease. Re-compressing a previously compressed file is a no-no.

 

Rendering out an animation/movie from Premiere, I find that the Sorensen codecs in a Quickime file are the most reliable in terms of quality, compression and the client being able to view them but the best option is to provide the animation as a DVD video.

 

Jim