Cory Petkovsek
Forum Replies Created
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Using your unchanged settings with a core 2 duo processor, 2gb ram, v11.5, I’m rendering each frame on an average of 23 seconds.
I did have to replace your background texture with an image since yours wasn’t there. However your background isn’t seen by the camera anyway so that shouldn’t affect anything.
Even if I turn on the background and use a 7mb hdri in the back, it still averages 23s per frame.
I would do some other tests with a more simple scene. Sounds like you have some other issues, unrelated to this scene.
Cory
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Those textures are procedural. Texture size will depend on how close the object is to the camera. I’d start with 1000×1000 then experiment with the UV mapping to size it properly.
Cory
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Right about what? He didn’t say anything. Nothing positive or tangible anyway, except that corporate training is often disconnected from practical application. To that extent, what he did say has been consistent with my experience.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com -
Also if your geometry is polygonal it has normals and you may need to make sure your normals are facing the appropriate direction. Some things work with mis-matched normals, some do not.
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com -
Look at your timeline, turn on automatic mode to see all key frames and delete it there. If it’s jumping still, it is likely still keyframed.
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com -
Ask the cat to step off of the keyboard. 😉
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That depends on your application as Adam said. What you pointed out is called banding. Make sure your display settings for your computer are set to 24-bit.
To make noise directly in c4d you can use the layer shader in the color channel (it looks like you have a gradient now). One layer is what you currently have. Another layer is one of the noise shaders. Make it very subtle with very low opacity. Play with the shape of the noise so it looks like film grain.
Or if you composite in after effects as many do here, then add an effect to the video to add film grain or noise. Again make it subtle.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com -
Steve
Ummm. No.
FAT hasn’t been used for a long time.“File allocation table” is a concept. Yes FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 are three implementations, one widely used today (FAT32 is often used on flash disks). Since you mentioned NTFS, that also uses the same concept. NTFS uses a relational database called the Master File Table (MFT) to store it’s file allocations of the data store. Like FAT it has two copies and utilities like chkdsk run many consistency checks within the database and between the two copies, among other things. So FAT, MFT, same concept, but these details aren’t really necessary to answer the op’s question.
The drive hardware does have error correction built in. No magnetic recording medium is error free and error correction is used to hide those from normal operation. Further, the act of reading and writing (copying) adds another level of error detection. If there are bad sectors on the hard disk, your copy will fail.
In the IT industry, “error correction” is a term often used to describe something that verifies either with the actual source or with a checksum of some sort. Consumer level memory does not have error correction for instance. I checked my own knowledge and found that you are indeed correct. Consumer harddrives do have ECC built into them. For the Op, ECC will only verify during reading or writing, but won’t help when the spindle fails.
As I mentioned to the Op, hard drive archival is a viable option, but with it’s own caveats.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com -
Harddrive archives are very viable. They do not have error correction however; see below for details. Only use them in duplicate or more.
Data is stored in sectors on the disk, and indexed in a file allocation table (a catalog) at the beginning of the disk. There are usually two copies of this table.
Operating systems utilities for scanning the disk only do two things:
1) Verify the consistency of the file allocation table, with itself and with the backup if there is one for the filesystem being used.
2) Scan each sector to make sure it is readable, and possibly writable. (takes a long time and is usually not a default option)
If a sector has gone bad under your data, there is no way for you to know about it except by attempting unsuccessfully to read it, or by doing one of these scans. The drive does have a mechanism to seamlessly write to another sector when it detects a bad one. Thus you’ll often never know unless you attempt to read and can’t.
If the file allocation table index becomes corrupt the operating system disk utilities can often fix it by it’s own cross references. However if it is not repairable then the data out on the disk is not recoverable by the IT lay person. There are no borders of files.
Imagine the library of congress, except we remove the covers from every book. Oh and the library is NOT sorted by section/subject, but random; And many of the books are split up; 50 pages on one shelf, 200 on another, 50 on another, 10 on another.
Now the shelves are filled with millions of bare pages, books randomly situated and not contiguous. Only the library catalog contains the exact beginning and end of each section of each book, which makes the system function.
If the library catalog gets corrupt; yes the data is there, but the only way to recover it is by manually scanning through the pages to recognize the title pages, and you hope that the whole thing is contiguous.
Many file types have magic numbers at the beginning of their data streams which acts like a title page. If it was split up in sections, not even an IT master can do anything for you. This is a terrible way to recover data. I’ve done it; it sucks.
“Error correction” specifically refers to a mechanism such as parity, CRC or ECC as are built into other technologies like server RAM or RAID systems. Standard harddrives do not have this technology. With their reliability and the above mentioned disk scanning utilities, it may seem this way, but its not the case. Error correction is like running the verify at the end of a DVD burn; except it happens in smaller blocks and it can fix it!
Finally, with moving parts, harddrives eventually will fail when the electronic motors give out. Thus plan for it failing eventually and you won’t be disappointed. If you only use the drive once in a while it may last 50 years; who knows? If the motors give out, there is a high likelihood that the data is still readable on the platters of the disk. However you have to take it to a specialty shop for recovery and will spend $1500-2000 for a data dump, with no guarantee.
All in all, two copies of your archive data on two spindles (or disks or tapes), at two locations will reduce the probability of unrecoverable data to something inconsequential.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com -
I have an IT background of 15 years; 9 as a consultant. Backup is a regular part of my business. It saved my butt last night when I accidentally over wrote a design file!
The original op had two parts of the question: 1) How to archive masters 2) How to make information readily available to clients. I would recommend treating them differently.
1) How to archive mass amounts of data
I would archive the master camera files, and all your work project files. Whatever you retained during the project and can’t regenerate (transcodes I’d probably delete).Optical storage and tapes are the cheapest storage available, with tapes being the largest investment, but cheapest GB/$ ratio.
Starting with tapeless acquisition and archiving to tapes is…. well amusing.
Anyway, tapes are susceptible to tape errors and data loss. Bluray discs are susceptible to scratches. Neither can hold up to heat or mishandling. Still either is a solid storage solution with proper care.
Harddrives with spindles have a 100% failure rate. You can use them (I do), as long as you always have multiple copies. At any given time I have copies of my data on 2-4 different spindles. RAID is not backup, it is used for fault tollerance which is a different issue (ask if you want details).
SSD drives can fail; I have had one do so. They are not perfect either. Poor GB/$ ratio.
Large flash sticks could work. Not much room for sharpies; not designed for stacking/cataloging; And the GB/$ ratio isn’t there.
Regardless of the hardware, I recommend at least dual storage. When the archive is made, make two copies. One is stored on site, the other off site: at your home in a safe (if client data is sensitive), or locked up at another environment controlled facility.
You should target at least $750 for a single midrange backup drive, or at least $1500 for an autoloader. Exabyte (now Tandberg) make some fairly high GB per $ ratios for lower end data storage. There are many good manufacturers and tape technologies.
https://www.tandbergdata.com/us/index.cfm/products/tape-drives/
They have a VXA-320 which holds 160GB per tape (320 w/ compression, but not in video!), or you can get their autoloader which holds 10 tapes (useful for backing up your server, run by automated backup software).
LTO tapes are the top end; they have up to 1.5TB tapes! But a single drive w/o autoloader is $2500; $10k with.
DLT, SLR and DAT are other technologies. When researching consider data path from the machine to the drive (USB/Firewire/SCSI, etc), the cost of media, the GB/$ ratio, the transfer speeds, and of course the cost of the drive.
Finally, you’ll need tape backup software. Many of these drives will come with a free version of backup software. Some of that may be fine. Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 used to come with backup software that could run tape hardware. They removed it in vista.
Backup Exec is industry standard (as is Arc Serve and some others) for automated backups, but it may be overkill for what you need unless you get an autoloader or want automated backups of your network. Don’t get Backup Exec System Recovery; that’s a very different and confusingly named product.
There are other cheaper, simpler and probably free tape backup software programs. Just note it’s not as widespread as CD/DVD burning software because it’s not a consumer level technology.
Bluray discs on the other hand have low investment cost. $100-200 for a bluray burner for your desktop or laptop, burning software, a spindle of discs and a sharpie. Just make sure to get discs that don’t have any longevity/deterioration problems as some DVDs did.
I currently work on one system and backup to my server in two locations on different spindles. For now it works, but when I’m ready to move into archives I’ll switch to Bluray. Already some of my projects are 100-150GB which will take multiple discs. At some point I may switch to LTO or VXA tapes, but only when my the bluray plan is taking too long or too much management.
2) How to show clients
This is a very different issue that needs it’s own strategy.Setup batch processing to compress out smaller versions of your files and store in a public/easily accessible place. Scripting with ffmpeg is an easy way to do this, as long as it can read your mxfs.
Then you can send them any BD/DVD/Flash disc or have it online.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video
http://www.CorporateVideoSD.com