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Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

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Steve Alexander

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Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Jul 08, 2019 12:07 pm

There are still bugs in Fusion Connect and while it sort of works with Media Composer, an update hasn't been released since Fusion Studio 16 b3 - was hoping this would receive some love since the only reason I purchased Fusion Studio initially we because of the much promoted integration with Media Composer - is BMD deprecating this functionality now that they are full swing into the NLE business?
Time Traveller
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostTue Jul 09, 2019 12:56 am

Are you on the latest Media Composer?
DaVinci Resolve Product Manager
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostWed Jul 17, 2019 10:46 am

Yes.
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Aug 12, 2019 8:58 pm

Do we get a Fusion Connect for the release of Fusion Studio 16?
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Robert A. Ober

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostWed Aug 14, 2019 4:42 pm

Hey Folks,

Media Composer 2019 and Fusion 16 are installed on my 2018 MacBook Pro. I have a DNxIO but it is not currently plugged into the laptop. In the AVX2 Library folder there was a FusionConnect.avx from 2017. Not sure how it got there.

I tried to send a 1080p/24 (there is no such thing as FullHD, that was made up by TV manufacturers) clip to Fusion. The plugin made the frames but nothing happens when I click Edit Effect which is set to open Fusion.

Having moved the FusionConnect.avx to the Desktop, l am now going to install FusionConnect 9.02 and see if it works.

This has been a sore spot for me because as I believe someone stated, FusionConnect was a selling point for the DNxIO.

Robert
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Robert A. Ober

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostWed Aug 14, 2019 10:34 pm

Fusion Connect 9.02 behaves the same. Fusion does not load.

Adding to my frustration, I exported an AAF from MC 2019 and loaded that in Resolve Studio 16. Clicked on a clip that needs stabilizing and did a VFX Connect and Fusion Studio 16 opened but I cannot get stabilization to happen after getting tracks via the Tracker node. I have posted in the Fusion forum asking for help.

Y'all be cool,
Robert
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostSat Aug 17, 2019 11:18 am

Hi Robert,

FusionConnect was broken in Media Composer 2018.7, I believe (and ever since) until recently when BMD released a FusionConnect 16 beta3 (you can find it in their downloads page).

The point of this thread is that it seems BMD hasn’t updated it again to go along with subsequent betas (and now the final release) of Resolve Studio 16.

But, the FusionConnect 16 beta3 does work with MC 2019.7 with a few minor hiccups.

Cheers
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Robert A. Ober

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Aug 19, 2019 10:02 pm

Hey,

Thanks for the partial clarification. You did not mention the Fusion Connect beta in your original post.

If I go to Support Center and click on Davinci Resolve, Fusion and then go to latest downloads I see no Fusion Connect Beta. I find no link to a Downloads page.

And of course the fact remains that the latest Release of Fusion Connect(including the one in my Avid downloads) does not work with the latest release of Media Composer and Fusion Studio.

As one of my favorite teachers said, "I flunked mind reading three times."

Y'all have some fun,
Robert
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostTue Aug 27, 2019 11:17 am

The Fusion Connect 16 beta download was there but has mysteriously disappeared. I’m not sure why BMD is not involved in this thread. Time to contact support.

Jokes on me - I just went to the support page after posting this and Fusion Connect 16 is available again (not the beta version, the release version).

I’ll give it a try to see if any improvements were made since the beta 16 release.
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostTue Aug 27, 2019 11:54 am

I gave Fusion Connect 16 a try in Media Composer 2019.7 and it's pretty useless in my opinion. It works (sort of) but the performance is so slow on my system as to be laughable.

Maybe someone else will have better luck.
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Robert A. Ober

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostTue Aug 27, 2019 1:32 pm

Steve Alexander wrote:I gave Fusion Connect 16 a try in Media Composer 2019.7 and it's pretty useless in my opinion. It works (sort of) but the performance is so slow on my system as to be laughable.

Maybe someone else will have better luck.


Thanks Steve for taking some time to test it. I may try it if I have time.

Take it EZ,
Robert
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Shrinivas Ramani

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostFri Aug 30, 2019 4:00 am

Could I check if you are using the August 9 release of Fusion Connect found in https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/sg/sup ... and-fusion ?

Steve,
If you're using this version and still have performance issues, could you elaborate on them? Could you also detail your system specs?

Thanks
Shrinivas
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Glenn Sakatch

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Sep 02, 2019 3:39 pm

Robert A. Ober wrote:Fusion Connect 9.02 behaves the same. Fusion does not load.

Adding to my frustration, I exported an AAF from MC 2019 and loaded that in Resolve Studio 16. Clicked on a clip that needs stabilizing and did a VFX Connect and Fusion Studio 16 opened but I cannot get stabilization to happen after getting tracks via the Tracker node. I have posted in the Fusion forum asking for help.

Y'all be cool,
Robert


Robert, if you are asking how to stabilize in fusion, you simply need to set the tracking mode to bg only after doing your track. This should give you a stabalized image.
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Sep 02, 2019 5:39 pm

Shrinivas Ramani wrote:Could I check if you are using the August 9 release of Fusion Connect found in https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/sg/sup ... and-fusion ?

Steve,
If you're using this version and still have performance issues, could you elaborate on them? Could you also detail your system specs?

Thanks
Shrinivas


System specs are in my signature.

I tried a simple blur with an elliptical mask in Fusion Studio 16 (with the recently posted Aug 9 Fusion Connect) and found that even within Fusion Studio 16 the playback was horribly slow. Rendering it back to Avid improved the playback speed but the overall workflow with Avid is very poor (Avid does some frame caching that holds old frames where new rendered Fusion frames should exist).

I've certainly documented this before but it seems to me that very few users are interested in Fusion Connect and I have a difficult time believing that folks at BMD are testing this workflow in earnest (even the button to allow for custom folder rules doesn't work).

1. Performance in Fusion Studio very poor (could be the codec used from Avid -> Fusion, I don't know)
2. Edit Effect in Avid does not correctly launch Fusion Studio (partial launch, have to launch a second time for it to work and even then, Fusion does not come to the forefront)
3. Fusion Connect > Options > Configure Path Defaults (in Avid Effects editor) does not do anything - this is one reason why I have trouble believing the developers are testing Fusion Connect
4. Memory footprint - seems to easily use my 64 GB of RAM between Fusion Studio and Media Composer (try a glow with an ellipse mask on some UHD footage from Media Composer - a short 200 frame shot - gobbles up > 22 GB of RAM just for rendering).
5. Color of rendered frames back in Avid is off unless you see the timeline to green/green or better. Yellow and yellow/green have the wrong color.

There are other deficiencies but these are a good start. It's just not a very satisfying product in my opinion and the workflow isn't viable as such.
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Sep 02, 2019 11:51 pm

Update:

4. As for the memory usage, I set the limit down to 30% of the RAM (default 60%) and this plays better with my 64 GB setup because Media Composer was already taking over 30 GB. So this issue is resolved by a smarter setup.

5. The wrong color space (or whatever is going on with the green/yellow timeline) sometimes carries through to final render in Media Composer and sometimes not (I have edited this post a couple of times because I've been seeing mixed results as I continue my tests).

edit - looks like if my output bit-depth in Fusion is float16, rendering in Media Composer will correct the color space (?) issue. If I render out int8, etc. rendering in Media Composer does not correct the color space issue.

Performance is still very slow but as I become accustomed to how Fusion <-> Media Composer inter-operate, I can move default project locations around after the 'stub' is created and then reconnect both in the effect inside Media Composer and also in the path variable in the Fusion comp and this all works much better.

I find I am jumping through hoops but if I am careful and spend a bit of time sorting through these relatively simple details, Fusion Connect can be useful. I just wish Fusion Studio 16 performed as well as its counterpart inside Resolve Studio 16 - for some reason the performance is quite poor in the standalone. I'm still looking into this - could be disk bandwidth with the huge proxy files created by Fusion Connect.

I will report back if I make any headway.

Cheers

Add - I've tried forcing GPU and CUDA, etc. and nothing improves performance. Tried moving the Fusion project (proxy files and all) to a very fast SSD and it made virtually no difference. Only a single core is taxed during rendering and not much of my P4000 GPU is being used (nor is the disk). I can't see where the bottleneck is unless it is a single-threaded process in Fusion (that would do it). Is there some option in Fusion to make use of multi-cores?

Thanks for listening to Steve's deep disappointment (Fight Club reference).
Last edited by Steve Alexander on Tue Sep 03, 2019 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostTue Sep 03, 2019 4:16 pm

I've continued to 'play' with this configuration. I've found that the GPU memory is a problem since it would seem that Media Composer and Fusion Studio compete for the 8 GB VRAM on my P4000.

I've also noticed that Fusion Studio vaporizes (crash, no crash dialog) during rendering (in Fusion). My test is a pretty simple series of nodes.

I disabled use of GPU and at least my 28 cores (14 x 2 hyperthreaded) are busy now and I actually get slightly better performance without my GPU involved. However, I still see Fusion Studio crash during rendering.

If I open Fusion Studio by itself, I can render the comp (created in Media Composer) but I don't think this is memory-released as odd as that seems (I am watch memory usage) but it could be because I have a cap on the amount of memory Fusion Studio is allowed to use (30% of my 64 GB) so perhaps it hits that cap harder when Media Composer is running. I don't know.
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostTue Sep 24, 2019 11:33 am

I've continued to refine my use of Fusion Connect with Avid - In the latest Fusion Studio 16.1 b3 I have tweaked the memory cache setting to 20% and have found that the workflow has improved. I'm using the latest Media Composer 2019.8 as well. For what ever reason, the workflow seems better (clicking 'Edit' in Media Composer now correctly launches Fusion Studio and loads the linked comp - this used to be problematic).

I've also learned how to correctly move the Fusion Connect comps around after they are initially created (there is a location specified in the Fusion Connect plugin and a path variable in the Fusion project - both must be updated) and now that I know how to do this, I feel far more comfortable integrating Fusion into my Avid workflow.

There are still a few rough spots but I seem to be adapting... The title of this thread is now misleading - Although it is true that BMD has not been consistent in releasing Fusion Connect paired with its release of Fusion Studio (e.g., they did not release a new version of Fusion Connect with Fusion Studio 16.1 beta).
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4
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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostMon Apr 05, 2021 4:13 pm

Steve Alexander wrote:I've also learned how to correctly move the Fusion Connect comps around after they are initially created (there is a location specified in the Fusion Connect plugin and a path variable in the Fusion project - both must be updated) and now that I know how to do this, I feel far more comfortable integrating Fusion into my Avid workflow.


Hi Steve. You seem to be the only one with a similar conf. to computer that has this working. I suspect my problem lies in the paths as the issue of the COMP not loading after I hit the edit button in media composer started after I changed the path of the AVX plugin to a different hard drive than the default.

In your quote above, how to you update the Fusion Connect Plugin and the path variable in the fusion project. I cannot find it anywhere in the media composer settings.

Thanks for the help.
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Any chance of an update to Fusion Connect to go with b5?

PostSat Jul 03, 2021 1:18 pm

I can't recall but I'll give it a try and see...

Update:

So the case I am looking at is when I want to change the location of the Fusion Connect project and clip... If you open a Fusion Connect effect in MC you can see the Path Settings - If you change the location of this path you need to update the Path Settings to point to the new location. That's the first step but it's not enough because the Fusion Project also embeds a path variable to the original location so you need to update that as well (that's the seconds step).

Here's an example:

Originally I created a Fusion Connect clip here:
S:\2021_01_b1_001\TestFusion\MVI_0526.new.01\

Then I moved the folder structure to here:
D:\2021_01_b1_001\TestFusion\MVI_0526.new.01\

(so, new drive but I tried to keep the rest of the path the same because it is based on PROJECT NAME, SEQUENCE NAME and CLIP NAME...)

Then I opened MC and located the clip with the Fusion Connect effect on it... Opened the effect editor and used the 'browse' in Path Settings to locate MVI_0526.new.01 (the CLIP NAME subfolder) so that the Path Settings now read as:
D:\2021_01_b1_001\TestFusion\MVI_0526.new.01\

Next I click 'Edit Effect' in the Effects Panel in MC and this opens the correct Fusion project however, Fusion no longer knows where to find the source files. To fix this, use File > Preferences > <comp name> > Path Map and you will notice that there is a variable called 'Shots:' that has a value:
S:\2021_01_b1_001\TestFusion\MVI_0526.new.01\\

Correct this (in my example) to:
D:\2021_01_b1_001\TestFusion\MVI_0526.new.01\\

Now exit Fusion Studio (saving the updated comp) and then back in MC, try 'Edit Effect' again and this time it should find the files and correctly display source and rendered destination files.

Sometimes I find that Fusion Connect does not open the Fusion project correctly (nothing to do with moving the files) and I have to click on 'Edit Effect' a second time in MC to force it to open the project.

All of this is for a PC, obviously, I'm sure there are subtle changes for Mac OS.

I'm also guessing that you don't need to hold to these paths as strictly as I've done but I have never tried to modify them substantially from the pattern of project, sequence, clip as these work for my purposes.

Does this help at all?
Time Traveller
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 | Fusion Studio 18.6.6 | Win 11 Pro (22H2) | i9-7940x, P4000 (536.96, 8GB VRAM), 64GB RAM, M.2 boot, SSD scratch, RAID10 data | (laptop) 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, 32 GPU cores, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4

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