Fusion Studio 7.71 AVI Net Rendering

In FS 7.71 when I have a comp which saves to an AVI and I go to the Render Dialog and choose Net Rendering and in the dialog I have specified a render group which is just a single computer (which has the proper codecs, etc.), and I submit the job... the window that pops up says that the comp was successfully submitted and there is no other comp ahead of it in the queue.

I have the Render Manager window open at the same time and I can see that there is NO comp in the queue and NO comp is ever added.

So basically... this doesn't work. Even though it acts like it does (unless I'm missing something).


Ideally, what I want is to submit multiple AVI comps to a queue where each of the AVI comps is rendered in sequence un-attended (each by a Group containing a single machine). As it is now... I must be present and render an AVI comp individually. I must manually load the next comp and hit 'render', wait for it to complete, load the next one, etc.

Is it possible to submit AVI comps to the Render Manager and have single-machine groups render the comps?

Thanks for any ideas!

If the comp is successfully submitted but does not show up in the RenderManager,
it's very likely that Fusion got hold of a different RM than the one you're looking at.

Ar you using Fusion's built-in RM, or are you using Fusion's stand-alone RM?
Which of those starts up first? (Fusion tends to grab the first RM it finds)

What do your Network-prefs say?
Which machine are the comps submitted to?

Rendering streaming-formats over the network on single machines should work just fine.

Thanks for the ideas Eric!

My main workstation (where I am using Fusion 7.71) is PC32. There is a render group setup containing only PC32.

In Network Preferences... I had PC31 setup as the Master Name. So when I went to right-click the Fusion Render Node on PC31 and start the Render Manager there... it showed that the AVI comp had been attempted to be submitted there. But there was an error shown there that said 'Could not find the composition' and it displayed the local path of the comp on PC32 such as E:\whatever\whatever, etc.

So the comp had been submitted somewhere and attempted to be rendered... but it didn't work because it wasn't using UNC pathnames and couldn't find the comp. When I set PC32 to be the Master Name... the AVI comp is successfully found and rendered by PC32 because the local path is local to PC32.

Is there a setting somewhere that would have submitted the comp with UNC pathnames instead of local? (This would have made PC31 (or any computer) able to find the comp).

Thanks again.

Hi Mike.
You're welcome...

UNC path names need to be built as UNC path names in Fusion.
So if your local E:\ drive is also connected as (say) \\myServer\eDrive\
then you must use \\myServer\eDrive\ in the loaders in order for other computers to find the footage/comp.
(Given that PC31 has access to \\myServer\ as well...)

Alternatively you could use relative paths.
So if all the footage is in folders relative to the actual comp
Like:
E:\whatever\myComp.comp
E:\whatever\footage\myFootage0000.png
then Fusion could use the magic comp: variable to find the footage.
That would be
Comp:\footage\myFootage0000.png
in this case in the loader.

That way you could simply copy the entire \whatever\ folder to any drive on the network,
and the comp would find the footage, no matter if it sits on E:\, X:\, or \\myServer\.

Cheers.

Eric.

Thanks very much for this info Eric!

Welci.

BTW...
You need to activate "Enable reverse mapping of non-user paths" in your comp's
PathMap-prefs in order for this to work properly...

PS:
Plus you can use PathMaps in the comp's prefs as well.

So if you footage sits on E:\whatever\
and your PC31 sees that drive as \\myServer\whatever\
you can add PathMapping
from: E:\
to: \\myServer\

OK, I'm still having trouble with this. I use UNC paths all the time in MAX/Deadline, etc. I prefer to use UNC paths for everything so all slaves and all apps can always find and save the footage.


The main workstation is PC32 and I have made PC32 the Render Master.

The comp is a simple Loader-->Saver and it is located on PC32. The Loader loads PNGs... the Saver saves to an AVI.

The Loader footage path is:

\\PC20\F-Drive\projectname\foldername\whatever_0001.png

The Saver path is:

H:\video\projectname\whatever.avi (this location is on PC32).

This comp displays fine in Fusion and will render locally just fine.


But if I try to change the Saver path to a UNC path:

\\PC32\H:\video\projectname\whatever.avi

and try to render it locally... it fails.

Why? It's a UNC path. In MAX, I can specify either UNC path or local path and it will work locally... but in Fusion 7.71 the UNC path fails to work when rendering locally. If I change it back to the local path again, it renders straight away.

So problem #1 is UNC or local paths should both work when rendering locally.

Is there a setting I'm missing to make UNC paths work in this case?

Thanks!

Hmmm...just curious.....shouldn't that be
\\PC32\H-drive\ (or whatever the name of the share is)
rather than \\PC32\H:\ ?

The share name for that drive is 'V-RAID'.

Earlier I tried:

\\PC32\V-RAID\etc.

and also

\\PC32\H:\etc.

Both fail to render locally. I even tried V-RAID\etc. (no computername) and it failed. Only when I changed it back to the local path:

H:\etc.

will it render local successfully. Not sure why it would refuse to work with these other paths... because it's writing to AVI?

Thanks again.

I'm pretty sure it's not AVI related.

Just did a quick test here at the office, and all UNC related savers work just fine.
Maybe some sort of network-mapping-issue on one of your machines?

Networking and UNC paths are working fine in all other apps... not sure why it would be different in Fusion 7.71. Fusion 8 doesn't support writing to AVI files anymore so I can't test it in Fusion 8.

I'll keep trying.

Thanks again!