Skip missing frames

Hi,

is there any way to make fusion skip missing frames? I have a sequence with several intentional holes in it (such as 1-80,140-190,210-500) and i want to render them all in one shot. I do not want to have missing frames there, neither as held last frame, nor as blank colors, i just want to skip the missing frames.

Fusion seems to have only fail, wait, output color and hold previous options, but i can not find such elementary option as skipping missing frames.

Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks

EDIT: I am also not looking for option to render certain frame ranges. I know that's possible in the render dialog, but there are many shots, and they all start at different frames, while in my fusion comps, they all start at 0. So i would have to go searching in every shot where the blank spaces are and write down the frame segments manually. That would consume way too much time and effort so that's not really an option.

There's a few things you can do.

First of all, set your preferences (in General) so that your sequences start at the frame number of the first file in your sequence on disk, instead of starting at 0.

Then, there's the Clip List tab in the Loaders, where you could load in the several parts of the sequence and skip frames by hand. Cumbersome at best, but alternatively you could script it.

There's also this:

http://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckle ... p?f=6&t=74

with which you get an XSheet retimer, and all you would need to do for that to work with your example is put

1 to 80
140 to 190
210 to 500

in the XSheet, and you're done.

Thanks! It's still quite PITA, but it's better than what i was stuck with previously. Hopefully this crucial feature will be implemented in Fusion soon.

Thanks! It's still quite PITA, but it's better than what i was stuck with previously. Hopefully this crucial feature will be implemented in Fusion soon.

It's so dangerous though. That's like asking "is there a way to permanently suppress render errors?" We saw the same thing in Generation, where it would fail "gracefully" when a frame was missing but that behaviour messed up so many renders before we figured out what was going on.

I do have a better option. Make an IFL. From the commandline do

Code: Select all

dir *.ext /b > MyBrokenSequence.IFL

And drag that IFL into Fusion. Wacky tip? IFL's can be used in SV's too. (!)

I would not want to be messing with IFLs every time i want to do something as simple as this. I often have many render pass sequences, so even if it looks simple, it can get complex very easily. Of course skipping missing frames would be dangerous, but i do not want this to be on by default. It would be one of the options in the missing frame dropdown. It would not be on by default, and if you would select it, you would know what you are doing and that you are suppressing errors for that particular node.

Right now, i had to go back to !Composite!... yes, you hear right, the old wonky Autodesk Composite, to get my job done, because while i could do it in Fusion, it was just a LOT slower to do, thanks to the absence of this very important option.

What would the behavior be if this option is enabled for multiple loaders but only one has missing frames? Still skip? Just thinking out loud... not questioning the validity of your use case.
Another problem could arise with retiming, where the loader's frame differs from what's rendered at the moment.

From what I've dealt with in regards to Fusion's API it might not be possible by "just adding the option to the dropdown". The command to skip a frame needs to be escalated from the lowly tool back up to the global render mechanism just like a failure but different.

What would the behavior be if this option is enabled for multiple loaders but only one has missing frames? Still skip? Just thinking out loud... not questioning the validity of your use case.
Another problem could arise with retiming, where the loader's frame differs from what's rendered at the moment.

From what I've dealt with in regards to Fusion's API it might not be possible by "just adding the option to the dropdown". The command to skip a frame needs to be escalated from the lowly tool back up to the global render mechanism just like a failure but different.

Regarding multiple loaders, frames would not be skipped as long as any of the input nodes, such as loaders would output some data, only if there were not any valid inputs at all, like image generation nodes or file loaders, only then frames would by skipped, instead of either failed with render holding, or outputting blank frames one has to go through and delete then.

I can imagine there may be numerous cases where it's a bit tricky, but i would still welcome this option.

Best description of what i want would be telling Fusion "If there is a failed frame in my rendering, do not hold the rendering, instead, keep going further and render out any frames that do not fail in the rest of rendering task."

It could even be global, not per loader. You know, just something to prevent failed frames from stopping the rendering task.

It could even be global, not per loader. You know, just something to prevent failed frames from stopping the rendering task.

Good idea!

Have you thought about a 3rd party render manager? Most should have options to give up on failing frames after a while. The downside is that this would only work if you render 1 frame at a time instead of bigger chunks...

I was just about to script a solution, but this usecase has just to many potential problems.

If you still want a few approaches I'd go with:
- Script that updates the ifl for each loader before sending of to render
- Better: Script that manually evaluates the render ranges before render
I am pretty sure that there is a pretty clean implementation possible with the EventSuites.

However if you want to not use scripting I'd go with:
1. Output a particular color that is rare (-1,-1,-1,-1).
2. Probe this output and use it for a Disolve to not process everything that you would normally render.
You still have a lot of frames that you would not need but they are easier to locate and you don't waste so much processing power.

Stefan:

Yes, we do use Deadline at work, so that could do the trick, but Fusion is not installed anywhere else so it would be a bit clunky to run it through render manager. Not impossible though, definitely good idea. The thing is Deadline or any other capable render managers cost something. That's not an issue at work, but it could be at home, for my personal projects.

Blazej Floch:
I am sorry, unfortunately I am not as experienced with Fusion yet (though i am learning really fast), so I am not really sure I fully understand what you are talking about. Will your solution mean the missing frames won't be outputted, so that I won't have to dig into the output folder, filter them out manually and delete them manually?

Blazej's idea with the Probe is quite brilliant.
You can also use the Probe to modify the Saver's Blend,
effectively writing out *no* images at all when the Loader outputs
an image with negative color values (because of a missing frame).

See attached.

You can even use this setup to make the Saver output nothing
if *any* Loader in the comp detecs a missing frame.

Thanks. It seems to work but unfortunately I am not nearly that experienced with Fusion to understand what's going on. I opened the comp, it does what it should but I really don't have any idea what's going on in there

Almost every tool in Fusion has a Blend-Slider in the CommonControls Tab,
ranging from 0 to 1.
That slider controls the overall 'strength' of that tool.
In terms of the Saver basically all values *between* 0 and 1 are disregarded,
but(!) a value of 0 means 'do not write out any image'.

So the task is to somehow 'automate' that slider to fall down to 0
when there is a missing frame in the Loader.

So you set the Loader's missing frames option to 'Output Color'
and select -1/-1/-1 as the color.
(As this color is rather rare, at least in 'regular' footage...)
The Loader should be in FloatingPoint mode (Import Tab) or a ChangeDepth should be used
directly behind the Loader to set it to FloatingPoint.
(INT will truncate RBG values lower than 0, and the trick would not work)

You RMB on the blend-slider in the Saver and select Modify With -> Probe.
The Probe shows up in the Modifier Tab.
Drag the Loader (or ChangeDepth) into the "Image To Probe" field of the Probe.

In the value Tab of the Probe set the Scale to -1 / -0.9.
That means that the Probe will output 0 for RGB-Values of -1
and 1 for anything above -0.9

There you go.
When the Loader encounters a missing frame,
it will output (-1/-1/-1),
the Probe will output 0
and the Saver's Blend will be set to 0 accordingly,
hence no frame will be written to disk...

Damn, that's really smart!

On the one side it's a bit unfortunate we have to do such complex hacks for so simple things, BUT on the other side it really shows the power of Fusion. How tools can be used in creative ways to do almost anything. I feel like this is closer to node based programming than it is to image compositing

Thank you for the explanation.

That's the thing, though. If there's 7 ways to solve your issue, it's hard to justify adding an 8th. It's the Eagle in a Barrel problem, where do you draw the line and say it's enough? Not just from a development and support cost view, but from a design philosophy view.

Fusion's philosophy on this isn't very clearly defined. They have overlaps on tools and utilities, for instance there is a Color Gain tool that is basically a subset of the Color Corrector, just with a different UI. Brightness / Contrast is an even smaller subset. There's no Color Gamma tool, though. At that point the recommendation is to just use a preset, macro, or fuse (and they ship an example of that).

Conversely, I've argued for an alternate Loader that would allow them to add features to the existing one and remove features from the alternate one until all users were happy with the complexity/simplicity offered.