Transfer data from NTFS to MacOS - how?

I am tying to help someone transfer all their data from a PC to a new Macbook Air. I've consolidated everything onto a single 3TB USB drive (only need to transfer a portion of this to the macbook, the rest will stay on portable media). I am not a mac user myself. I tried connecting to the HDD to the macbook via a USB-C hub but get a warning message saying the drive is not readable and have 3 options: Eject, Ignore or Initialise. I thought MacOS could read NTFS enabling me to transfer stuff to the macbook. My next thought was to create a MacOS formatted USB drive but that means I wouldn't be able to transfer data to it as I would be using the old PC to access the NTFS drive. I have considered using exFAT to do the transfer NTFS HDD > exFAT HDD > Macbook, but I am worried about losing associated metadata on items like pictures and video etc. I am hoping someone has a much simpler and cleverer idea than I do.