As you probably know already, the 64 bit version of max has a serious problem: it can’t output .mov files.
To work around this, I want to automatize a process I do manually:
- save preview as an image sequence
- convert the image sequence to a .mov movie file. I understand this has to be done externally, in Quicktime.
I don’t know very well how to get started with scripting quicktime in #2. In CGtalk I found this cScript to control quicktime and do exactly that, but it doesn’t work (maybe because I’m on Vista?):
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4181823&postcount=9
I get an error message in this line, when accessing the qtExporter settings.:
“var xmlCodecInfoText = qtExporter.Settings.XML;”
If someone has an idea to make this work, decent documentation on cScripting QT, or other solutions I could try (Python? .Net?..) it would be a great help.
Even though there wasn’t any help, I managed to solve this. I made a script which makes quicktime movies from max, even x64 versions. I finally controled Quicktime with a command-line jscript, called externally from 3ds max.
What I couldn’t do was save the qtime export settings for future reference… oh well, it works.
You can find the script at scriptSpot:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/mov-preview-maker
And read some more details in my blog:
Feedback, bug-reports, suggestions for improvement, etc. are very welcome.
Yes I’ve always found, if I need to render any sort of movie/video, I will spit out an uncompressed .avi from Max (‘animated bitmap’ frames), and use a command-line tool to encode it- Quicktime, mencoder, ffmpeg, cscript, etc. So I think you’ve found the ‘right’ solution.
If you want avi’s I have some good news, there’s a 64bit ffdShow that I’m using for some time now. It just works like regular ffdShow, set up the codec of desire in ffmpeg and render to ffmpeg.
I use it for previews from max and fusion. Mostly xvid.
-Johan
Hi Johan,
sounds great, but can you provide some more information for us un-initiated?
J.
I’ll try!
I’ll first have to correct myself, I said 64bit ffmpeg but I meant 64bit ffdShow.
First download the 64bit version of ffdshow
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173941&package_id=199416&release_id=569930
ffdShow is (I think) best considered a codec wrapper. I wraps several codecs in one. And as such allow you to pick ffdshow as codec, which in turn will encode the movie to the selected format.
So after you install ffdshow you open the codec settings and choose for example MPEG-4 with the Xvid codec. It will make a xvid. Only one pass settings (quality or bitrate) seem to work for max, but that’s more than enough for previewing.
I an’t go into all the settings, because there’s just to much. But with ffdShow you can definitly render some decent avi’s!
-Johan
Using Vista x64 here, and this page was also a good source of information and codecs: