Okay rendering frame by frame is easy.

When you would normally select .AVI file, choose .TGA (Targa). This will render out the series of frames.

Then you should be able to import that into premier, I don't know exactly how to import it (I dont have premier to test), but it should realise that its an image series when you import the first frame.

Good luck with this!

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One note. in max make your file name XXXX..tga two dots puts the numbers in between for the sequence eg. my_render.0001.tga .In premier you will need to check the box "numbered sequence" (or similar) for it to see it as a sequence of images. for some reason both premier and afterfx have this. I guess so you can import a still from the sequence if you choose to. Fusion automatically recognises the sequence when you import which can be a hassle when you just want a still for a background or something.

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when I put the image sequence into Premiere instead of it having all the frames one by one, it leaves each frame on for 2 seconds each. Do I really need to manually go in frame by frame to cut down the duration?

Also, what compresser in premiere should i use to get DVD quality?

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That sounds weird. In premier you have to make sure all your settings are right for the project before you start. There should be a DV pal preset or something. The editing mode should be DVpal 25fps 720X576. but if you want to export to an avi for playback on your computer with a different frame size. or if you want an avi for import into a dvd authoring tool you need to swap to a video for windows setting. You just have to fool around and try stuff to figure out the best settings for your needs. DVD quality isnt actually that high but from my experience if you are making a dvd (at least with encore dvd) you should export an uncompressed avi and load it into encore then let encore transcode it. it doesnt matter if it doesnt play back uncompressed because after its transcoded for the dvd it will play back fine. If you want a compressor that gives a good quality avi for the web look at divx, or xvid. Or if you need a good quality preview file to look at the animation use quicktime with sorenson 3 codec. Thats just my personal opinion because there are literally thousands of options that probably work well too.

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erhm .tga is a like jpeg and jpg right?

just curious he was trying to make animation not many .tga files.. i mean lets consider he got 2500 frames then it will render 2500 .tga right?

for me I always use uncompressed .avi but with your problem I don't have any idea..
I only convert it to .flv or .mov for youtube purposed

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Started Max last September 2008

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I think you're asking is TGA a still image?

Your right. And it will render out 2500 frames. It is more useful to have an image series to import as you can do more things with it.

For example TGA is a lossless image format meaning it will compress (using RLE encoding) without losing any quality at all, making the total size of the series smaller than an uncompressed avi.

Also TGA is a 32bit format (jpeg and other formats are usually 24bit), meaning it can save an alpha channel and which contains all of your transparency information. So if you have to composite with other footage its all ready to be comp'ed over the top, no chroma key processing needed.

So it is better to save your master copy as a TGA series, then you can always load it into the RAM player in max (go to Rendering menu, select RAM player) then save it out as an encoded avi file when you need it.

Hope that is helpful for you.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

As well as that, rendereing out an image sequence is a lot safer than rendering out an avi or quicktime, especially on time consuming renders. If max or your computer crashes half way through rendering out an image sequence, you can just reload and continue on from where it crashed. If you're rendering out a movie though you have to start all over again.

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All that is important stuff to understand. even in studios I am surprised at how many people don't fully understand alpha channels and channel data.
I nearly always render to 32 bit tgas just incase I need the alpha later on.

for those who don't know heres a bit of extra info.

.jpeg is a format that allows 3 8bit channels ie: 24bit. RGB (red green blue) is
made up of three 8bit greyscale images with values between 0-255. for example in the red channel you would have a value such as 121 . When you add these values together for all the channels you get the final colour value for any given pixel.


.tga allows 3 eight bit channels and one extra 8 bit channel for transparency
(the alpha channel)

.TIFF allows 3 eight bit channels and an alpha channel and also lets you save 16bit channels, thats 3 16bit channels and a 16 bit alpha channel. which is useful for images that need extra detail in the greyscale for each channel such as displacement maps. or if you need to do things like blur the image heavily you will get a better quality result. The amount of possible colours is increased significantly and you will avoid banding and other artifacts if you use 16bit images. photoshop psd also allows for 16bits per channel.

.exr (openexr) or other HDRI (high dynamic range image) formats allow 32bit channels which are calculated using a floating point number like 0.00-1.0 which allows values to go beyond 255. and store extra channels like zdepth within the file.

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