Save .anim files as binary, even though rest of project is text?

Unity Engine
1

Is there a way to save just the .anim files in your project in binary format, even though the editor settings have the project set to text only?

We currently have 1800+ anim files, which are over 7.1GB in text format. Our time to hit play and get into the game can be several minutes.

In standalone builds, the animations seem to load relatively quickly.

Obviously, we get no benefit from having the anim files be text files; we’re never going to want to merge two peoples separate changes or even look at these in an editor. I suspect loading all those text files is taking the editor forever.

Is it possible to convert them to binary instead?

2

Seems it is not possible at the moment. We have the same problem with generated mesh assets
There is an attribute for script serialization: Unity - Scripting API: PreferBinarySerialization
Which is useless for animations and meshes.
Unity, please make per file serialization format option!