Best Codec for 3DS Max animation coming into FCP

Preparing to receive animation files from 3DSmax on PC. For the first pass (low-res animation), I'm offered three choices: h264, motion jpeg, photo-jpeg. Of these, the artists would prefer to send h264, but photo-jpeg seems like the only way to go, as I would expect the others wouldn't play well with FCP 7.

I gather that the limited export options for the low res pass are a function of the way 3DSMax handles 'fast outputs' as opposed to full renders. (For finals (1920x1080) I'll get image sequences and convert to prores here.)

Anyone here know 3DSMax PC intimately enough to tell me if there is a better option I can request?

Thanks.

I don't know that product, but you're right in not going for the H.264s unless you want to transcode them before import, and that could mess with your timecode, if that's an issue. Photo Jpeg is what I would choose out of that list.

You can use Animation.



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I dislike receiving assets from PCs. They do not have ProRes capability. H264 is too compressed. Tell them you want Animation @ "Best" rez.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

are the animation files going to be used as their own clips or will they be composited over video?

either way, animation, best or animation best+alpha will be the way to go

As an animator there is really only a few options, uncompressed all the way.
Either mov with million of colours +, or a targa, tiff, or png sequence.

Remember, unlike most video, animation is uncompressed on render.
To keep the quality, you want to use the best codecs possible.

If you really want to keep quality use an uncompressed video timeline as well.

Thanks for all your comments. I guess I wasn't clear enough. I'm only concerned about the first pass / low res animation stages (we call this layout). For the full rez finals, we go 10 bit TIFF or 16 bit DPX.

For the layout and rough animation passes, I'm looking for the best performance in FCP, given that the source is 3DSmax' s 'quick output mode' (not sure what they call this; it's the tool the animators use to check their work before committing to full renders). In that mode, they've told me 3DSmax is limited to these three codecs: h264, motion jpeg, photo-jpeg).

So my questions were, a) of those three, which gives me the best performance in FCP (my guess being p-jpeg); b) does anyone happen to know if 3ds Max is more capable in this mode than I've been led to believe?

Pjpeg. It's less taxing on your system, and transcode to ProRes for RT preview, or you can render everything to ProRes in the timeline.



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