AVI is 29.97fps, even though animat. is PAL 25fps

[lordclick]

HELP!
I'm trying to render an animation at 25fps. I set the time unit to PAL, Normal, 25fps in the animation preferences, and the animation plays back at 25fps. However, when I want to batch-render it to an AVI in CCIR PAL resolution at 25fps, it always creates a 29.97fps AVI file (which is the NTSC drop-frame framerate). I couldn't find any other option to set the AVI format to 25fps, or did I miss it? Is that a lack of Maya?
Thanks for the input!

[gmask]

What are you playing the rendered animation with? In After Effects you may need to set the interpretation to 25fps after importing. I don't know if Maya inserts the correct frame rate.. it may just render frames into the AVI format and nothing else. In general rendering directly to movie formats from Maya is not a good idea.. it is usually much better to render frames and then compress to a movie format afterwards.

[stevesayer]

gmask, do you mind if I ask why that is? --I've been pretty satisfied with the AVIs that Maya renders out. I just stick them in a little video editing app (VideoMach) and compress them afterwards... no muss, no fuss. I also have noticed that they tend to come out reading as 29.97 fps, but all the frames are there so that gets corrected when I recompress.

You know, as I type this, it sounds a lot less simple and efficient than it is. But the fact is I like not having to bother keeping track of hundreds and hundreds of rendered images... I have one image directory with a reasonable bunch of avis in it...

But as I said, I'm curious as to what the drawbacks of this workflow are. Can anyone enlighten me?

-Steve

[gmask]

Well since the AVI's that Maya outputs are uncompressed ..file sequences in most cases will use less disk space. Also if you are using a renderfarm even if only two computers then that makes rendering to AVI's a problem. Also if there are any rendering errors ..it easier to find and reque bad frames from a file sequence. Another reason is that in After Effects for example if I need to do a touch up on one frame in Photoshop I can launch PS from AE to paint that frame.. that is something you can't do with a movie file.

It depends on what you do.. if you work in a production studio then usually file sequences are mandatory.. if it's just you then it's not as much of an issue.

[stevesayer]

Great answer. Thanks for all the info.

-Steve

[lordclick]

That's a lot of great info, thanks a lot guys! So if I render into an image sequence, I should be able to import it as 25fps in AfterFX, right? I'll give that a try.

(btw., I did set AfterFX to 25fps, but anyway, the rendered AVI itself shows up as 29.97fps, when I check its file properties)

[stevesayer]

The important thing is that all the frames are there. I agree that Maya seems to output AVIs that want to play at 29.97 fps regardless of the settings. This will result in slightly speeded-up animation if you just play it as-is. But as long as you're doing something with the clip (bringing it in to After Effects to composite, or into some other app to compress, etc. etc.), you can control that rate explicitly.

To be a little more clear...

In my experience, if you render one second of animation at 24 fps, Maya will render a 24 frame AVI which 'thinks' that it's supposed to run at 29.97 fps. That's wrong, but it's also irrelevant since your 24 frames are all there correctly. Make sure that you tell your compositing/editing/compression app to ignore the framerate and the overall length of the clip, and just focus on getting those frames one at a time. Then all should go well.

-Steve

[lordclick]

Aha, that's a pretty weird thing to do of Maya... thanks for the tip!

That's probably the reason why it plays choppy when I play the AVI in Premiere, because it only has 25 frames, but wants to play 29.97 frames ps, so when it reaches the 25th frame, playback seems to 'pause' for 4.97 frames, because there are no frames left? Or it somehow tries to compress the 29.97 frames into 25fps (because that's the setting I have in premiere), making it choppy...? Hope I get this right...

How can I ignore that in Afx, do I simply need to set the framerate of the composition to 25fps, and it will use the (apparently) 29.97fps AVI as a 25fps AVI?

[gmask]

How can I ignore that in Afx, do I simply need to set the framerate of the composition to 25fps, and it will use the (apparently) 29.97fps AVI as a 25fps AVI?

Select your footage hit ctrl F and then type in 25 into the FPS box.

Then put it into a comp that has an FPS of 25.

[lordclick]

Thanks a lot, it worked with a Targa sequence!

[joojaa]

Well i think the problem is this way avi decoder is designed by microsoft, that operates in The US, so when you render a sequence of frames to a video clip the avi decoder asumes that the speed you are using is 29.97 wich is the american standard.

And maya only renders frames it doesnt care if its 25 fps or not this is controlled by the global speed in maya. and the sequence is realy 25 fps its only that the decoder displeys them to rapidly. so it just dumped a frame sequence in a avi file it didnt specify speed at all.

This problem is easily solved just open your file in a comp app and tell it that this file is actually 25 fps.

but be careful with this because its not enough for you to tell that the output is 25 fps because otherwise the aplication asumes you wan to convert 29.97 footage into 25 fps and this causes all sorts of problems.

Hope this sumarises this topic ina bit more understandable way

[lordclick]

Gotcha! I got it now, thanks a lot for all the infos!