tcastudios
02-06-2007, 02:51 PM
Hi.
I need to check this out with you and see if there is something common.
We do work on location making hundreds of effect shorts (loops) used in mediaplayers for live broadcast shows. These are jobs done over a couple of days at the arenas being used.
This last gig did stress me with some "absurd" rendering times.
We used two workstations (Me running Cinema and AE and my companion running AE and god knows what, like Particle Illusion, Combustion etc)
To that we have a small stack of MacQuads as NET Clients, and MacMini as NET Server. My workstation is a MacBookPro to get R10 happening.
And finally some Terabytes of harddiscs, all connected via Gigabit Ethernet/Firewire.
There wasn't any time to really check out what was going on at the gig so I sat down yesterday in my studio for a couple of hours and found some strange things.
To exclude any extra network issues I have only connected "my" stuff and no extra harddiscs.
So, the short version is:
Part 1:
Each time a scene is re-rendered, the rendering time increases. Sometimes to the absurd.
(See render tests below). If I restart Cinema, render times goes back to normal (And then increase again).
Pat 2:
Using NET render with scenes that renders very fast (1-2 seconds per frame) the assembling
takes many times longer than the rendering itself. (See example below).
This did make a Catch22 situation. To get things done I usually just throw the scenes at the Server and then continue with the next scene on my workstation. As that did cause problems
I copied the scenes "never got done" on the Server to Cinema itself, only to find this other increasing rendertime problem.
The longer version, sort of.
Render tests tcastudios.
Checking increasing rendertimes for the same scene.
Part 1: Checking rendering times for CinemaR10 itself.
Part 2: Checking assembling time for R10NET Server.(.b3d to endformat in this case .psd)
For *testing* purposes, the exact same install was done on three different machines(copying the MAXON folder) using Cinema R10.
Part 1:
Testing is done by rendering the scene using CinemaR10, delete the result and emptying the Trash.
Render the scene again, trash the result and so on.
The render settings are set to .psd format using regular alpha.
The test is done using two MacPPC Quads (4.5 resp 2.5 Gb RAM) and a MacProBook(2.16Ghz Intel, 1Gb RAM). All using the same scene running Cinema R10.
All machines updated to latest OS versions(OSX10.4.8), QT etc.
The animation is 800 frames, only have 8 lights using Lenseffect.
No geometry of any kind, so there is only a post effect getting rendered so it normally renders very fast.
What is happening is that the rendering gets longer for each new render.
If Cinema is restarted , the rendering gets shorter again but increase for each new render. Times are in Minutes:Seconds.
Rendertimes PPC Quad1 (4x2.5Ghz , 4.5GbRAM)
1 7.45
2 10.40
3 10.34
Restart of Cinema
4 7.08
5 14.03
6 15.19
7 13.38
8 9.46
9 50.26 (!)
10 38.25 (!)
Restart of Cinema
11 7.42
12 11.36
13 13.19
Rendertimes PPC Quad2 (4x2.5Ghz , 2.5GbRAM)
1 7.28
2 13.04
3 10.18
4 13.31
5 15.49
6 30.44 (!)
Restart of Cinema
7 7.49
Rendertimes MacBookPro Intel 2.16 Dual2 (1Gb RAM)
1 7.51
2 8.19
3 8.39
4 9.18
5 9.25
6 10.10
Restart of Cinema
7 8.01
8 8.26
9 8.54
10 9.19
11 9.09
12 12.15
13 11.07
Part 2:
Using the same scene as above and this time running R10NET.
Server: MacMini 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB RAM.
Client 1: Mac PPC Quad.
Client 2: Mac PPC Quad.
Due the current "NET-bug" on OSX, one CPU is turned off on the MacMini
using the CHUD tool.
The rendering of the scene took about 3min for the two Clients.
For the Server to assemble the result (800 frames of .b3d to .psd)
took 48minutes(!).
What is it that makes the assembling take so long? And what can be done do
not have this happening?
If I have a scene that takes about 5-10 seconds per frame,
the assembling seems to "breath" normally and all is done "in time" shortly after
the actual rendering.
The test scene used is attached (R10).
Cheers
Lennart
I need to check this out with you and see if there is something common.
We do work on location making hundreds of effect shorts (loops) used in mediaplayers for live broadcast shows. These are jobs done over a couple of days at the arenas being used.
This last gig did stress me with some "absurd" rendering times.
We used two workstations (Me running Cinema and AE and my companion running AE and god knows what, like Particle Illusion, Combustion etc)
To that we have a small stack of MacQuads as NET Clients, and MacMini as NET Server. My workstation is a MacBookPro to get R10 happening.
And finally some Terabytes of harddiscs, all connected via Gigabit Ethernet/Firewire.
There wasn't any time to really check out what was going on at the gig so I sat down yesterday in my studio for a couple of hours and found some strange things.
To exclude any extra network issues I have only connected "my" stuff and no extra harddiscs.
So, the short version is:
Part 1:
Each time a scene is re-rendered, the rendering time increases. Sometimes to the absurd.
(See render tests below). If I restart Cinema, render times goes back to normal (And then increase again).
Pat 2:
Using NET render with scenes that renders very fast (1-2 seconds per frame) the assembling
takes many times longer than the rendering itself. (See example below).
This did make a Catch22 situation. To get things done I usually just throw the scenes at the Server and then continue with the next scene on my workstation. As that did cause problems
I copied the scenes "never got done" on the Server to Cinema itself, only to find this other increasing rendertime problem.
The longer version, sort of.
Render tests tcastudios.
Checking increasing rendertimes for the same scene.
Part 1: Checking rendering times for CinemaR10 itself.
Part 2: Checking assembling time for R10NET Server.(.b3d to endformat in this case .psd)
For *testing* purposes, the exact same install was done on three different machines(copying the MAXON folder) using Cinema R10.
Part 1:
Testing is done by rendering the scene using CinemaR10, delete the result and emptying the Trash.
Render the scene again, trash the result and so on.
The render settings are set to .psd format using regular alpha.
The test is done using two MacPPC Quads (4.5 resp 2.5 Gb RAM) and a MacProBook(2.16Ghz Intel, 1Gb RAM). All using the same scene running Cinema R10.
All machines updated to latest OS versions(OSX10.4.8), QT etc.
The animation is 800 frames, only have 8 lights using Lenseffect.
No geometry of any kind, so there is only a post effect getting rendered so it normally renders very fast.
What is happening is that the rendering gets longer for each new render.
If Cinema is restarted , the rendering gets shorter again but increase for each new render. Times are in Minutes:Seconds.
Rendertimes PPC Quad1 (4x2.5Ghz , 4.5GbRAM)
1 7.45
2 10.40
3 10.34
Restart of Cinema
4 7.08
5 14.03
6 15.19
7 13.38
8 9.46
9 50.26 (!)
10 38.25 (!)
Restart of Cinema
11 7.42
12 11.36
13 13.19
Rendertimes PPC Quad2 (4x2.5Ghz , 2.5GbRAM)
1 7.28
2 13.04
3 10.18
4 13.31
5 15.49
6 30.44 (!)
Restart of Cinema
7 7.49
Rendertimes MacBookPro Intel 2.16 Dual2 (1Gb RAM)
1 7.51
2 8.19
3 8.39
4 9.18
5 9.25
6 10.10
Restart of Cinema
7 8.01
8 8.26
9 8.54
10 9.19
11 9.09
12 12.15
13 11.07
Part 2:
Using the same scene as above and this time running R10NET.
Server: MacMini 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB RAM.
Client 1: Mac PPC Quad.
Client 2: Mac PPC Quad.
Due the current "NET-bug" on OSX, one CPU is turned off on the MacMini
using the CHUD tool.
The rendering of the scene took about 3min for the two Clients.
For the Server to assemble the result (800 frames of .b3d to .psd)
took 48minutes(!).
What is it that makes the assembling take so long? And what can be done do
not have this happening?
If I have a scene that takes about 5-10 seconds per frame,
the assembling seems to "breath" normally and all is done "in time" shortly after
the actual rendering.
The test scene used is attached (R10).
Cheers
Lennart