EricMBloggie

You’ve spent all this time setting up your cameras, rendering over Backburner, and now you’re staring at a list of codecs. By now, you might have gone through about seven of them, only to find they show up black, choppy, or error-y. Which one works in Powerpoint? I’m going to take the mystery out of this for you– kind of like that “Masked Magician” guy did for magic on that FOX show.

(To be quick about this, it’s Windows Media Video 9, 720×480, 0.9 Pixel Aspect Ratio, 10,000kbps.  But here’s how to do it…)

You’re going to need a few things:

• 3D Studio Max
• Premiere Pro
• Powerpoint.

If you’re reading this, and you don’t work at the same firm I do, this might be a problem. There are other ways to do this, using free software, so this might still help you. We’re going to render this animation at DVD resolution (720×480@0.9), with a frame rate of 24 frames per second. That way, when you want to burn this to a DVD for a wild office party, it’ll be easy.

1. Setting the frame rate.
   

By setting the frame rate to ‘Film,’ you’re rendering at 24 frames per second. This is the same frame rate as film. What I like most about this is your have to render six less frames per second, and your eyes will perceive the motion similar to a 30fps animation. That’s a savings of 360 frames for every minute of video. That means more time for yourself and less time in the office!

2. Set the resolution and pixel aspect ratio.
   
   Render settings (F10) and then NTSC DV (video) in the Output Size
3. Render Uncompressed
   I’m going to assume you know how to render a sequence of images out of Max. If you don’t, read someone else’s help file, because you’re not going to find it here, pal.Render your files as either
   1. Targa/Tiff: Yes alpha channel, no compression.
   2. BMP: No alpha channel, no compression.

   Depending on whether or not you want to mess around with an alpha channel in Premiere. If you don’t know what an alpha channel is, render to BMP.

4. Premiere Pro Workspace
   After selecting ‘New Project,’ use these Custom Settings.
   
5. Importing a Sequence
   You probably already know this, but…
   • File –> Import
   • Navigate to your Image Sequence
   • Click the first image
   • Click the ‘Numbered Stills’ check box
   • Ok.
6. Render Settings
   We’re going to use the Adobe Media Encoder to make a really nice looking WMV file.
   • File –> Export –> Adobe Media Encoder

   Next, we’re going to make a custom Render Preset.
   
   This will encode your file as Windows Media Video 9, 2-pass VBR. In layman’s terms: Pretty.

   And now you have to set the ‘Audiences’ Settings. Why is it called ‘Audiences?’ To confuse you.
   
   We have our 24fps frame rate, our correct PAR and Resolution, and a really high Bitrate.
   The high bitrate will keep it from looking like a YouTube video.

   At this point you should save your render preset. I know I did.

   Render that Video!

7. Insert into Power Point.
   You really don’t know how to do this? Seriously?
   Ugh…fine, I’ll tell you. But you really should have gone to the Help file for this one.
   
   If you can’t figure it out from here, maybe you should reconsider the career path that put you in front of a computer.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial.