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Multi-machine rendering: One Machine skipping ALL frames.
Hello guys.
I´m having a liitle problem while trying multimachine rendering.
I already ask Todd Kopriva at Adobe, but just to cover every possible angle I´ll ask here as well.
I have an iMac and a MacBookPro similary powered (16 and 8 GB of RAM, Core2Duo and i5) both running After Effects CS5 (not the render engine). They both have the project and all project files in their individual drives. (no watch folder mode). They both have the exact same version of After Effects, updates, fonts and plugins.
I just set both macs output to the same network folder, as TIFF sequences of course wih the “skip existing files” option selected, and the “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” multiprocessing option turned OFF for both machines. (Since there´s a known issue regarding multiprocessing and network rendering according Adobe)
One of the machines (usually the second one to start rendering) just skips ALL frames (4000 frames in just 3-6 seconds, meaning is a very fast proccess, not like some others who had problems with slow skipping). It´s like it sees the folder and automatically assumes all files are already there, so it doesn´t render a thing. The other machine renders just fine.
What could be wrong? The one that skips the frames is not encountering any errors, it just skips files that aren´t there.
Any ideas?
PC users look at sex images on their computers.
Mac users want to have sex with their computers. -
3 Replies
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Why not set up the first machine to render the first half of the project (tiff sequence to one folder) and the second machine the second half (tiff to a second folder)and then merge the folders. This will save you headaches and will basically accomplish the same thing (I know it’s not exactly the same, but for practical reasons it’s almost the same thing).
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
hey,
had the same thing today (but only on one maschine – no multi render here)(i run a german version so i´m not shure if the translation of the names is correct!)
go to Render List, then Rendersettings, Time-Sampling.
Check if the Start and End time is set correctly!worked for me
(take a step back, to see the bigger picture)
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Thanks for your replies guys.
Tudor, rendering half comp in a machine and the other half in the other is exatcly what I´ve been doing since It´s the only thing I can do.
The drawback is that both computers don´t have the same speed, so if I set up half and half, by the time the faster one finishes it´s part, the slower one will keep rendering for a while.
The solution to this would be to time both machines so I can get the speed ratio between them so I can calculate the percentage of the sequence I have to set each one to.
Of course I´m just being whimsical, I just set them about 40% – 60% and it´s about right.
Even so, not every frame of a comp takes the same amount of processing, so I end up with one machine rendering it´s part in less than 5 minutes, while the other takes almost two hours.Also, when I use this method, I don´t set them to TIFF sequence like I would for real network rendering. Instead I render to two separate video files and then put them together in Premiere.
Stefan. In both my machines I set the time span to the length of comp.
So that shouldn´t be an issue.At Adobe´s site, this same issue was addressed by not using multiprocessing, which I´m not doing anyway.
I´m totally clueless.
PC users look at sex images on their computers.
Mac users want to have sex with their computers.
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