How to make an .avi file play in Maya?

[wadeco]

I know I can use frame extension to control individual frames of a movie to "play" a movie, but how do you get a .avi file to play? I tried the most obvious method, just importing, but it didn't work. Trying to get a TV to play in the background.

ps. Thanks for any replies, I usually wouldn't ask this type of question without exhausting myself to find the answer, but I wanted to solve this tonight.

[wadeco]

Ok, maybe the question seemed too specific. Can you get any type of movie files to play in Maya without using the frame extension to bring in seperate images?

Thanks

[mythprod]

From what little I know the only movies that will play in Maya are uncompressed movies like .avi files no compression. If size is an issue you might be able to try something like .png image sequences and such. I haven't ever used anything other than straight .avi uncompressed so I'm not sure what the limitations are.

[gmask]

Maya only renders to uncompressed AVI's. I think it iwll read compressed AVI's but depending on the codec you get strange results. It is better to stick with sequences of files and last time I checked it did not support PNG.

[user_deleted]

Seems like the use of movie files is pretty poorly supported.
If you need to resort to using frames, you can use something like irfan image viewer www.irfanview.com (you'll need its plugins too). Use this to make sequential BMP images from the frames in AVI or MPG files. It can convert those BMPs to TGAs too.

BTW irfanview is noting to do with me - its just a great bit of freeware!

[joojaa]

Its not just a size issue, using uncopressed files frees memory usage, and renders faster than using copressed footage especialy some tight packed codecs where you might need to calculate a few (sometimes e3ven more than 50) frames to get the desired frame.

This is especialy important when you are playing frames in non succesive order.

[campbell]

yay! irfanview! it deserves props, so props it is!
the amount of crazy stuff my friend has fermented in that little application is insane.

[tommie]

Hmm..I checked out the help and they mention Maya support also Quicktime, but when I tried to load it it does not even see the files with that extension.
I converted the Quicktime file in Premiere, to an AVI, (no RLA) and it work.
ocimpean

[gmask]

I think they only support quicktime fully on the mac. On the SGI was some limited support. On the PC there seems to be no support.