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I've just started to learn compositing and some basic editing stuff, primarily using Nuke, Fusion, and Resolve. I've had good luck with the speed of playback after caching in Nuke and Fusion, but for whatever reason in Resolve, even using a 1/4 proxy, when I'm dealing with any sort of image sequence (always exr cos that's what I render to) it never seems to properly cache. I've tried enabling the auto caching in the clip menu, and I've played around with some of the cache settings (though I really don't know enough about the various formats it uses for that, I'm from a CGI background so all the ProRes stuff is gibberish to me), but I can never seem to get the kind of smooth playback that Nuke and Fusion give. I did learn that Fusion (and by proxy I assume Resolve) don't handle multilayer EXRs as well as I'd like, but that's a system killer regardless so I'll likely move to single layer and just output different files for whatever passes I need. That will also make re-rendering a specific pass a lot less complicated (right now I have to pull the passes from the existing exr, comp in the new one, and recombine to a new file). Is Resolve just a program that needs an SSD? Don't have one on my desktop, but if it will likely make a difference I'll spring for one. My PC specs are as follows, in case any of this could be an issue: i5 quad core @ 4.0ghz 32GB DDR3 1600 RAM nVidia GeForce 660ti 3gb 7200 RPM SATA mechanical drives
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Jul 5, 2016 08:15
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:53 |
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1st AD posted:What's the frame size/frame rate/codec/bitrate of your source material? Thanks for the response! I'm using 720 or 1080 32bit float EXRs depending how many computers I could toss at rendering and how long I wanted to wait. When working with 1080p video footage it actually plays back pretty smooth even without using a proxy, most of the time close to the original framerate, then once it caches it's butter and I can do all the editing and grading I want. I know my system is getting pretty long in the tooth, but a full upgrade is a ways out for me so I'm trying to optimize the speed at caching and playback. I'm guessing it's my choice of using full float EXRs (which are often multilayer), considering it doesn't happen with video files. I just don't understand why they can cache fine in any other program, but Resolve, no matter how long I wait, will stutter horribly on playback. This extends to viewing them in the initial clip selection screen. It's why I thought an SSD might make a difference - if it can pull it off the disk faster, maybe it can cache faster and avoid whatever issue I'm having now. I'm going to go through each of the cache format settings and comparing, because it might be that my system will never be able to handle playback of EXRs at whatever it's set at currently. As I'm learning this because it's fun and to help out on some short films my CGI meetup group is making, I'll likely never be working with anything above 1920x1080 and dealing with compressed footage from the start. If I can get the CG to be almost as smooth to work with as the video, I'll be happy. If I can't, I can just stick to Nuke and Fusion where I know it works on my machine (and probably do similar finishing work in Nuke Studio).
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Jul 5, 2016 17:49
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I got an SSD to help with my Resolve stuttering woes, along with spending a bunch of time tweaking how it should cache the files. It now can cache the clips okay, but the moment I scrub (even with node caching, input and output caching on) it forgets the cache and has to rerender the whole clip again. It also does this when switching from clip to clip sometimes, so I'll have the whole timeline cached, it will play through the first clip fine, then hit the second and the whole blue bar turns red  . I don't understand what's going on at all, the research I've done says that if a clip is cached I should be able to play it back until I make a change to it, and I don't think going back to the beginning of the timeline should count as a change. It's even saving the caches fine, I can watch the folder balloon in size after setting it up... It's only happening with EXRs though (albeit single and multilayer), video files get realtime playback, so I think just doing the comp stuff ahead of time in fusion/nuke and rendering out as some other format should work fine. I've actually seen way better results in Nuke and Fusion (in nuke I can get realtime playback of a 720p multilayer exr, only needs to cache when I start adding nodes), which is awesome and what I was hoping for. My system may be pretty old and not really cut out for video production, but this extra bit of speed I've been able to squeeze out of it has helped a ton.
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Jul 11, 2016 15:13
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Lizard Combatant posted:Another thing too is that video cards can have their own colour and gamma settings adding another step in the chain. They can be turned off in your card's utility though. I've personally had some weird issues related to this; sometimes my system will randomly decide it wants to use the nVidia color settings instead of the system ones, and I'll be left scratching my head as to why everything is dull and dark.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:20
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Armagnac posted:Hmmm.... That sounds really strange, although I rarely deal with EXRs. It may be a permissions issue with where your render cache is, I'd try moving it. I'd call Blackmagic, you can usually get someone there on the phone. Are you on PC or OSX resolve? On resolve for Windows. I'll check the permissions - I've been having some odd issues related to that which first reared it's head while trying to use Renderman, and it's likely my fix only partially solved things. I only discovered the issue in the first place because Renderman was telling me my drive was write protected even though I'd been reading and writing to it daily with no issues, and some searching showed the permissions were all screwy. Also just realized the Resolve files I've been using have been carried over from one drive to another, so if it's a permissions issue with the actual project file the fact that I moved my cache location might not matter. Need to try a new project and see (the first thing I should've done, but oh well). Thanks for mentioning that btw, I'm not sure I would've considered it could be permissions since I thought I fixed it, but we all know how that goes... E: You were right, it was permissions!!! Started a new project with everything set up fresh on the SSD, and I can scrub, add clips, etc all I want and it doesn't reset the cache. This makes me a happy man! The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jul 12, 2016 |
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Jul 12, 2016 06:09
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BonoMan posted:Hey can anybody with the very latest update of AME see if the H264 audio glitch is happening with them? Coming out of After Effects (again very latest edition) - 100% of any AME export to straight h264 or using the YouTube preset (which of course is h264) presents an audio glitch where the last few seconds of audio are actually a chunk of audio from about 6 or 7 seconds prior. For example: "Go online and check us out for a free tri- go online and check." I don't use this but did some looking for you, and there are a ton of complaints on the Adobe forums about this exact issue, some going back like a year or so... People have found using a silent audio track running the length of the timeline works, or extending the project length a couple seconds and only rendering what you need, but Adobe themselves seem to not be able to fix it yet. No one seems to know what causes it, but it seems to come after an update and only affects using AME. Adobe Help 01 Adobe Help 02
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Jul 15, 2016 02:05
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Out of those listed I only have experience with Resolve and Blender, and both have a somewhat steep learning curve. Though Resolve actually works really well for my simple editing needs when I want to toss together some iPhone clips with color correction and some basic fade transitions and titles, all the way to it's integration with Fusion when I'm comping CGI shots. And the free for commercial use deal is really nice as well, though that's probably not(?) relevant for your son. E: if he's going to be dealing with more than some simple 720-1080p shots just edited together though, Resolve requires a pretty beefy PC - ideally a decent SSD, lots of RAM and a modern video card. I started on it with an old i5, a mechanical drive and a GeForce 660ti, and that wasn't powerful enough to comfortably work with exr sequences, even at only 1080p. The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 15:13
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Power Walrus posted:Any of you fellas or ladies worrying about the seemingly-inevitable strike? I wasn't hurt too badly by the last one, but I was just getting started and working in commercials. Now I'm staring down the barrel of a work-stoppage that would complicate things. Over here we're waiting to see if MITHC Season 3 gets delayed; we have a handful of other projects we can work on, but MITHC is our main deal so the severely reduced income would suck. Honestly though, to me this just reinforces that the VFX industry is a drat mess because there's no union - while many of the other related industries (like the writers) can strike for better treatment, it feels like my fellow VFX artists would rather brag about unpaid overtime and no benefits than even consider forming a union.
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Apr 25, 2017 04:37
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Power Walrus posted:I'm sorry to hear that. It's terrible to hear people wearing labor abuses like badges of honor. VFX, race to the bottom, etc. I've doxxed myself to hell and back already, so I'm not too worried! I work for Theory Studios, and we did most of the large CGI and set extension scenes in Season 2. Volkshalle, Germania, Tempelhof airport, the exterior through Kido's office window, and a few other bits and pieces. Barnstorm, the lead VFX vendor, did all the matte painting and compositing, and many of the set extension bits. They've got some really talented artists, so it's been a blast collaborating with them. My official title is lead shading artist, but I ended up doing most every skill, ranging from prop, set and character modeling to lighting, scene optimization, and rendering. Lots of shots have my work (episodes 1,2,4,8,9,10), and for being my first industry gig it was pretty awesome! Wasn't expecting to end up as a lead going in, since CG was a hobby up until Theory hired me for s2, so being responsible for both a ton of work and other artists was a neat experience. Glad you like the show, and hopefully neither of us will get wrecked too bad by the impending strike...
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Apr 26, 2017 02:42
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I installed the beta yesterday, and was greeted with all of my audio mixing on an existing project messed up; the volume and panning I meticulously automated by hand is all gone. I haven't figured out how to fix it without redoing everything, since they seem to have changed how doing pans and fades works. That was enough to put a damper on my fun, I don't have the time to redo it right now. I'll be testing it more when I have some fresh projects to edit, but for now it seems like it's not worth using if you want to try it with existing projects.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:25
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:53 |
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Man, reading about local stuff has me wishing we had that option. We’re a fully virtual VFX/animation studio that also does VR and AR, with ~50 artists literally all over the world, and we’ve had some serious growing pains regarding storage and file access. Right now, we have an internal sync tool that does syncing, publishing, and time tracking, and a Shotgun-style website integrated which allows for asset review, assigning tasks, time tracking, and also has a file browser to our server for uploading and downloading as a backup. This is connected to a backend server which in the end goes to a Synology array at the co-owners house (the other co-owner has a Synology as well, acting as a mirror). There’s also a Resilio system set up, feeding into the Synology, which is used on certain projects. I use a bunch of “toaster” external drive bays and more recently added a 4-drive RAID array, and will be adding a Synology system myself so I can become a full mirror. That’ll give us the central hub and 2 mirrors spread across the US. Wasn’t originally anticipating needing to become a remote backup, but my archiving habits saved us on 2 occasions where poo poo broke in the worst possible way, so I’ve decided I might as well go all-in and help keep things safe. But this may all change, as we’ve developed a totally new storage solution, which is both faster and simpler than our current setup. From the artist’s end it’ll act the same, but the backend is way more fine tuned towards our specific needs, and has better integration regarding AWS and the cloud render farms we use. From what I’ve gathered talking to my boss, the Synology is a good solution for RAID and NAS storage needs, and the tons of models are all pretty expandable. They’ve got their own processors and RAM, and usually multiple network ports, so they can handle large amounts of simultaneous traffic. I assume they’d be good for a non-virtual studio, and the only concern would be file management. But that’s where an internal sync tool or website might benefit, some singular location where tasks are assigned and files are managed, so it’s easy to confirm you’re working on the latest asset and let others know when something is checked out. Even if not, running everything you can off of the central NAS is what one of our partner studios does - they mainly do comp but also handle some 3D in-house, and their artists all work right off the server, with heavy shotgun integration. That at least helps avoid version mismatch that can happen when artists are working locally on the same assets.
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Dec 23, 2017 21:33
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