I would suggest rendering them uncompressed from max, and then apply your codec in Premiere, means that if the animation starts getting blocky from the codec you don't have to re-render again. Depending on your exact content there are a various number of different codecs you can use. The main thing to remember is the data rate - don't make it too high or the cd drive won't be able to keep up. Director can handle both movs and avis with ease, so it'll just be a matter of experimenting with different codecs to find the right look - there is no quick and easy solution for codecs - it just requires a lot of experimentation.