The correct way to merge two renders?

[dann_stubbs]

I am doing my bulb explosion render. I had to change the frame rate from 30 to 25. It turns out that when i do that in the render settings it does not update the animation.

So my render is in its 400 frame of 500. This still leaves 100 frames to render.

Will i suffer any quality issues if i just splice the 2 renders together in my video editing program? Any tips appreciated also.

There's no way i have time to render from scratch all 600 frames. As it is now 400 frames has taken 60 hours. Eeeeek. :(

unless you are rendering out to a movie file and have some lossy codec you shouldn't see any difference splicing the two separate renders together at all... pretty much how every studio does it...

dann

[Rantin Al]

60 hours?? Double Eeeek!

I cannot give any valid suggestions but I hope it works out in the end.

Cheers, Alan.

[danb]

Thanks Dann. What's a good codec to render in? Should i just keep the same codec i used to render in c4d, in my vid editing software?

[danb]

Dann do you notice any render time differences between codecs. I have mine set to mpeg-4 quicktime.

[dann_stubbs]

Thanks Dann. What's a good codec to render in? Should i just keep the same codec i used to render in c4d, in my vid editing software?

the best codec to render to is no codec - render to frames making sure you are using a lossless codec (i render to psd as it has internal lossless compression and can also hold all the layers you may want)

then compile the pristine frames in your editing software to your choice of codec - the reason for this is some codecs leave artifacts or other residue - if you render to it then you have no way of seeing these artifacts until after the render is done and the codec is already applied.

this way you can use the "perfect" non-degraded source frames to recomplie as many times as you need or want until you find the perfect codec that gives your desired quality and file size.

it will be a shame after 60 hours to find some fringes or banding in your render from the codec and need to re-render to correct them.

frames is also a good idea just in case during the compile to movie there is some issue or a bad frame - or gasp! a user error to correct in the render ; ) - you can just re-render the needed frames and insert the new good frame in the bad frame's place.

the last reason i'll give about movie files being bad is many use intra-frame compression meaning it can discard nearly all the data from subsequent frames and just keep the changed parts - this makes a mess if you need to edit or composite something into it.

just some friendly advice, i am sure many will agree with me, but as always people can choose whatever method suits them best.

if you need to re-render - drop me a note and i'm sure i can help you out here during some idle time gratis

dann

[danb]

the best codec to render to is no codec - render to frames making sure you are using a lossless codec (i render to psd as it has internal lossless compression and can also hold all the layers you may want)

then compile the pristine frames in your editing software to your choice of codec - the reason for this is some codecs leave artifacts or other residue - if you render to it then you have no way of seeing these artifacts until after the render is done and the codec is already applied.

this way you can use the "perfect" non-degraded source frames to recomplie as many times as you need or want until you find the perfect codec that gives your desired quality and file size.

it will be a shame after 60 hours to find some fringes or banding in your render from the codec and need to re-render to correct them.

frames is also a good idea just in case during the compile to movie there is some issue or a bad frame - or gasp! a user error to correct in the render ; ) - you can just re-render the needed frames and insert the new good frame in the bad frame's place.

the last reason i'll give about movie files being bad is many use intra-frame compression meaning it can discard nearly all the data from subsequent frames and just keep the changed parts - this makes a mess if you need to edit or composite something into it.

just some friendly advice, i am sure many will agree with me, but as always people can choose whatever method suits them best.

if you need to re-render - drop me a note and i'm sure i can help you out here during some idle time gratis

dann

Wow that was a lot of great information. This is the kind of stuff you can't find in books. Very helpfull. Thank you very much.

I am going to let the render finish and see what happens. If the client is unhappy with the render then i will most likely be contacting you to try to lease/rent/buy or whatever, some time on your renderfarm.

I know you usually charge per month. Do you do per project pricing and usage?

Right now my render is taking about 8 minutes per frame on my 1 P4 1.6ghz. Any idea how fast your farm could scream through that?

[JoelOtron]

Im breaking a sweat reading your post danb :)
NEVER render to a movie file--unless its a short segment that wont take to long to render.
If c4d locks up or the power goes off, etc--you're screwed---you're going to have to rerender from frame 0 again.
A good friend and studio mate (very stubborn guy) lost a 40+ hour HD render when he tired to simultaneously render in AE despite my warnings..twice...in a row. I felt bad for him the first time---but not so much the second time.

I'm assuming you have After Effects for your compositing?
If so--AE7 has an excellent retiming system--very much like reelsmarts twixtor plugin was.
If you found you needed to lengthen your animation, you can do so easily with the timewarp feature in AE7--it tweens the needed extra frames very well.

Edit--

tiffs and targas are the best to render to if your doing frames--as they're lossless.
If you are rendering to Renderking, however--you may want to consider pngs, or better yet, PSD files. Tiffs and targas are significantly larger files and will add to your download time. PSDs are compressed--but produce a crystal clear frame without any noticeavble artifacts. PSDs and pngs are much smaller than tiffs/targas--so will download faster.

[danb]

Im breaking a sweat reading your post danb :)
NEVER render to a movie file--unless its a short segment that wont take to long to render.
If c4d locks up or the power goes off, etc--you're screwed---you're going to have to rerender from frame 0 again.
A good friend and studio mate (very stubborn guy) lost a 40+ hour HD render when he tired to simultaneously render in AE despite my warnings..twice...in a row. I felt bad for him the first time---but not so much the second time.

I'm assuming you have After Effects for your compositing?
If so--AE7 has an excellent retiming system--very much like reelsmarts twixtor plugin was.
If you found you needed to lengthen your animation, you can do so easily with the timewarp feature in AE7--it tweens the needed extra frames very well.

Edit--

tiffs and targas are the best to render to if your doing frames--as they're lossless.
If you are rendering to Renderking, however--you may want to consider pngs, or better yet, PSD files. Tiffs and targas are significantly larger files and will add to your download time. PSDs are compressed--but produce a crystal clear frame without any noticeavble artifacts. PSDs and pngs are much smaller than tiffs/targas--so will download faster.

Ha ha, yeah i'm pretty nervous myself, here. Grinding my teeth alot too.

Well for the re-timing i think its too late for me to do anything now. Because when i set the 25 fps it adjusted the last frame to 500 and i didn't notice this until yesterday around frame 438 of my render. So that chopped off 100 frames from the rendering.

Thanks for the Tiff, Targa vs. PNG, PSD tips. Very helpful.

[dann_stubbs]

I know you usually charge per month. Do you do per project pricing and usage?

Right now my render is taking about 8 minutes per frame on my 1 P4 1.6ghz. Any idea how fast your farm could scream through that?

just a quick guesstimate would be a little over an hour. and i don't want to be an infomercial but most all other info is on the RK site.

dann

[Rantin Al]

Thanks for the rendering information, Dann. Very useful.:thumbsup:

Cheers, Alan.

[danb]

Aaaaaaaaaaargh. It happened. I lost the render. I turned my computer off by accident. Hit the power button by mistake.

Stupid, stupid. Me...

[JamesMK]

Aaaaaaaaaaargh. It happened. I lost the render. I turned my computer off by accident. Hit the power button by mistake.

Stupid, stupid. Me...

Well, at least now we know you will always render to separate image files from now on :D

Though I guess the point has been made already - nope, there are no even remotely good reasons what so ever to render an animation to anything else than separate images.

.

[AdamT]

I totally agree that rendering frames is the way to go. However ... :) if you ever lose your mind and decide you want to render a movie file, do use QT instead of .avi. There's actually a very good chance that you'll get a partially useable result in the event that something bad happens. With .avi? No chance whatsoever.

[danb]

Well i can think of one huge reason why you would want to render to a movie file. Lack of ownership of a video editing program. :)

That was me for a while. I rendered everything to .mov files.

Didn't even dawn on me to switch to image files, until this thread. :(

[JoelOtron]

Well i can think of one huge reason why you would want to render to a movie file. Lack of ownership of a video editing program. :)

That was me for a while. I rendered everything to .mov files.

Didn't even dawn on me to switch to image files, until this thread. :(

Yowee! Oh well--live and learn...

Anyway--all you need at the bare minimum for video editing is quicktime pro (just 30 bucks).
It will import an image sequence and spit out a mov file.

[govinda]

nope, there are no even remotely good reasons what so ever to render an animation to anything else than separate images.After working with someone who convinced me otherwise, I'm half off that bus. I render to QTs when I have a farm available. Ticking 'save .b3d files' in the Server prefs is the tricks. If your render quits, you can restart the render because obviously it only assembles the .b3ds at the end. Essentially it's the same as rendering to images, but as an added bonus you get a free assemble of your image sequences. That's no small bonus. It saves HD space and file transfer times, but best of all After Effects is much much faster comping qts than image sequences.

The downside is that for some godforsaken reason there's no image viewer that'll read .b3d format so that you can see your render full rez as it's cooking.

[Meteoro]

there's no image viewer that'll read .b3d format so that you can see your render full rez as it's cooking.

Hi there!

Try this link http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enformats.html.

This viewer list b3d images as supported. (I dont used it with this format btw)
Its great viewer, has a Windows, Mac and Linux version and its Free!

Edit: Free for not commecial use.

[danb]

I re-started the render. This time using .psd files. The render seems like it is going much faster. Already almost halfway through.

Things should slow down a lot once there are more particle fragments in the viewport, but i still think rendering will be a lot faster than before.

[JoelOtron]

AFAIK changing to frames shouldnt really speed up the render.

Are you rendering to PAL? (I noticed you mentioned 25fps). Note that the dimensions are different in PAL (768 x 576) then in NTSC (720 x 480/486)

[govinda]

Hi there!

Try this link http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enformats.html.

This viewer list b3d images as supported. (I dont used it with this format btw)
Its great viewer, has a Windows, Mac and Linux version and its Free!

Edit: Free for not commecial use.

Ooh, if this works I owe you a big bag of the best maté.

[seth0x2b]

Yowee! Oh well--live and learn...

Anyway--all you need at the bare minimum for video editing is quicktime pro (just 30 bucks).
It will import an image sequence and spit out a mov file.

Here's a thread on the Maya forum.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=345269

I't a very easy to follow "tutorial" there on how to use VirtualDUB to composite frames into final movie.Don't know I f you can use it to create MOVs, but If AVI's are ok, than that is the way to go..and it's free ;)

Cheers

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