Maya 2012 on windows 7 playblast

Tools Maya
1

hey guys
what is a good fast light codec you guys use for the playblast and with what settings?

i get scwed results and really large files with default maya options.

thank you

Yury

2

You get different codec options depending on 64bit or 32bit, but other than if it can export to h.264, I find exporting to the highest quality and auto converting the file after is best.

3

are you using h.264 with 32 or 64 bit?
I am on 64 bit by the way.
So you playblast from maya then use some other converter software?

4

oh sorry, should have elaborated. Since Apple haven’t released QuickTime for windows under 64bit, you’re limited to AVI outputs. 32bit still has quicktime outputs though, so no h.264 in 64bit.
Some systems have access to other system codecs, but it’s a bit hit and miss in my (limited) experience.

I playblast using AVI and use Adobe Media encoder to convert at home. For work, I’d probably set up an ffmpeg batch script or something like that, that you can tell Maya to execute after the playblast is done.

5

Yeah ffmpeg is nice.

Quick and dirty transcode using ffmpeg in python, to mjpeg video format (QuickTime player will identify it as PhotoJPEG.)

def transcode( outputVideoPath, inputVideoPath ):
	
	cmdlineArgs = [
		FFMPEG_EXECUTABLE_PATH,
		"-i", inputVideoPath,
		"-pix_fmt", "yuv420p",
		"-vcodec", "mjpeg",
		"-qscale", "4", # smaller value ~ less lossy, larger file size
		"-y",
		outputVideoPath # with extension, eg: .mov
		]
	
	error = os.spawnv( os.P_WAIT, FFMPEG_EXECUTABLE_PATH, cmdlineArgs )
	
	return error # 0 if success

ffmpeg supports h.264 output but I have no idea currently what the necessary parameters/arguments are.