Lightwave 3D exports acting Strange in FCP

Hi there!

I'm not a Lightwave user. I do video in Final Cut Pro Studio 2. I work at an ad agency with a 3D guy who gives me some .mov & .avi files to put in with my video projects. We have been having a problem both he and I can not wrap out little minds around and I am hoping someone here can help.

The current problem:
He has given me a batch of 4 second station IDs with a cool 3D sequence, and a simple text layer on top. The problem is that when I put his files into FCP the only thing that shows is the text, with black in the background. The clips look fine when previewed, and even in the timeline - I see the 3D footage with the text. It acts the same when I import to Vegas. It plays in the timeline, but when I render out a new avi or .mov all I get is the text with black background.

My 3D guy is suggesting that there may be a button I can push in FCP to make his files magically play correctly, but I doubt it. He has given me files that worked in the past, but now after 2 tries they aren't working again. I have had a somewhat similar problem where he added text to a file with film grain running and the grain dissapeared when the text came up, but not in his project - only when I tried to import it into a video application.

I am working with NTSC video in Final Cut Pro. His 4 second files are around 150MB, which seems quite large.

Can anyone tell me how he should export his footage so I can import it with no loss of elements like I have described? Any insite would be appreciated.

Thank You.

Chad
[www.precisionintermedia.com]

Stats:
Final Cut Studio 2
Mac Pro
Processor: 2x3 Ghz Quad Core Intel Zeon
Memory: 5GB 667 Mhz DDR2 FB-Dimm

My Music: [www.humboldtmusic.com]
My Work: [www.precisionintermedia.com] (Video & Jingles)
My Fun Video: [www.youtube.com]

I use LW output into FCP all the time - I ALWAYS output an image sequence from LW. NEVER an AVI or MOV or anything else. ALWAYS TIFF sequence.

If you dont want to deal with image sequence in FCP, load em into QT pro and save it as a QT animation. Or compress to Prores or whatever you like.

Thanks man. I have used image sequences before.

But what does one need to do to export QT NTSC Video out od lightwave? Does anyone know what may be causing the problem? I'd like to get a consistent workflow going with my 3D guy.

Chad

Stats:
Final Cut Studio 2
Mac Pro
Processor: 2x3 Ghz Quad Core Intel Zeon
Memory: 5GB 667 Mhz DDR2 FB-Dimm

My Music: [www.humboldtmusic.com]
My Work: [www.precisionintermedia.com] (Video & Jingles)
My Fun Video: [www.youtube.com]

The interface that LW has to QT sucks for some reason. I fought with it for a while until the LW geeks over at spinquad told me to never EVAR compress using LW. ONLY output image sequences. If your 3D guy tries to output to h.264 QT, he will crash LW about 80 percent of the time and then when it DOES finish and you try to run the file, it will be corrupted...