Hey all. I’ve been fighting this issue for some time and usually we get around it by rendering out all of our Quicktimes as image sequences and re-importing them into the comp but I have a situation where this might be impractical.
Basically I’ve found if an artist uses a Quicktime in their comp the render will fail with an error stating that a random file is missing (which isn’t). The clue is the path to the file is usually missing the : after the drive letter. So, has anyone else seen this and have you found a work around?
Can you post a full error report from the job? You can find them by right-clicking on the job and selecting Job Reports -> View Error Reports. We can check if AE is giving any hints as to why this is occurring.
Thanks! I did a bit of googling, and found that AE can potentially have a problem if a bunch of concurrent render processes are trying to access the same file from the network. Can you try submitting the same job again, but this time set the Machine Limit value to 1? This is just a test to see if the same problem occurs if only one slave is processing the job.
Thanks Ryan I did try that and the single machine failed as well. The particular project was eventually rendered locally on the artist’s machine but I’ll look for another chance to test this problem.
Ryan, I’m seeing similar behavior again but there are no Quicktimes in the project AND no helpful error message in the logs. Each task will run for about 10-12mins without rendering anything and then error out with this message. Again, the path appears malformed in the error message:
Exception during render: An error occurred in RenderTasks(): aerender Error: After Effects error: Unable to Render: File Sequence Not Found: I/WEF/01_ELEMENTS/03_VIDEO/WEF_stock_Forest_BG, Forest_1_9115-3_[00000-00270].png.
at Deadline.Plugins.ScriptPlugin.RenderTasks(String taskId, Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame, String& outMessage)
0: Task timeout is disabled.
0: Loaded job: DF-BOX-MAGIC_GRAVEYARD.aep - GRAVEYARD ANIM ALL 01 (999_050_999_64ba1b22)
0: Successfully mapped I: to \192.168.0.150\ifs\castle
0: Successfully mapped Z: to \192.168.0.234\c4d\user\administrator
0: INFO: StartJob: initializing script plugin AfterEffects
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “WARNING:(After Effects warning: .)" will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression "INFO:This project contains .” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “After Effects error: Unable to obtain a license." will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “unexpected failure during application startup” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “Invalid Serial Number” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “.Error:.” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression "aerender ERROR.” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “INFO:(The following layer dependencies are missing)” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “PROGRESS: ([0-9]+[:;][0-9][:;][0-9][:;][0-9])." will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression "PROGRESS:.” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “.*” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any stdout that matches the regular expression “.is using the same serial number.” will be handled as appropriate
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “Motion Sketch” will be ignored
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “The Smoother” will be ignored
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “Time Controls” will be ignored
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “Brush Tips” will be ignored
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “The Wiggler” will be ignored
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “Tracker Controls” will be ignored
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.After Effects.” will be handled by pressing “OK;Yes”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.On-line Registration.” will be handled by pressing “No”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.Optical Flares License.” will be handled by pressing “panel”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “Tablet Version Mismatch” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: About: After Effects Plugin for Deadline
0: Plugin rendering frame(s): 100-199
0: INFO: Performing path mapping on aepx project file
0: INFO: Stdout Handling Enabled: True
0: INFO: Popup Handling Enabled: True
0: INFO: Using Process Tree: True
0: INFO: Hiding DOS Window: True
0: INFO: Creating New Console: False
0: INFO: Render Executable: “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS6\Support Files\aerender.exe”
0: INFO: Rendering to local drive, will copy files and folders to final location after render is complete
0: INFO: Render Argument: -project “C:\Users\mtrender\AppData\Local\Temp\DF-BOX-MAGIC_GRAVEYARD_thread0.aepx” -comp “GRAVEYARD ANIM ALL 01” -s 100 -e 199 -output “C:\Users\mtrender\AppData\Local\Thinkbox\Deadline\slave\Render10\jobsData\AfterEffectsOutput_tempfonUT0\GRAVEYARDtest01_[#####].png” -mem_usage 100 100 -mp
0: INFO: Startup Directory: “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS6\Support Files”
0: INFO: Process Priority: BelowNormal
0: INFO: Process Affinity: default
0: INFO: Process is now running
0: STDOUT: has video RAM(MB): 0
0: STDOUT: aerender version 11.0x378
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: 3/5/2013 11:09:21 AM: Starting composition GRAVEYARD ANIM ALL 01 .
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Render Settings: Best Settings
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Quality: Best
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Resolution: Full
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Size: 6000 x 2000
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Proxy Use: Use No Proxies
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Effects: Current Settings
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Disk Cache: Read Only
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Color Depth: Current Settings
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Frame Blending: On for Checked Layers
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Field Render: Off
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Pulldown: Off
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Motion Blur: On for Checked Layers
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Solos: Current Settings
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Time Span: Custom
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Start: 0:00:03:10
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: End: 0:00:06:19
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Duration: 0:00:03:10
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Frame Rate: 30.00 (comp)
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Guide Layers: All Off
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Skip Existing Files: Off
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Output Module: Lossless
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Output To: C:\Users\mtrender\AppData\Local\Thinkbox\Deadline\slave\Render10\jobsData\AfterEffectsOutput_tempfonUT0\GRAVEYARDtest01_[#####].png
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Format: PNG
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Output Info: -
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Start Frame: 100
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Output Audio: -
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Channels: RGB
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Depth: Millions of Colors
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Color: Premultiplied
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Resize: -
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Crop: -
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Final Size: 6000 x 2000
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Profile: -
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Embed Profile:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS: Post-Render Action: None
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: PROGRESS:
0: STDOUT: aerender Error: After Effects error: Unable to Render: File Sequence Not Found: I/WEF/01_ELEMENTS/03_VIDEO/WEF_stock_Forest_BG, Forest_1_9115-3_[00000-00270].png.
=======================================================
Error Type
at Deadline.Plugins.Plugin.RenderTask(String taskId, Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame)
at Deadline.Slaves.SlaveRenderThread.RenderCurrentTask(TaskLogWriter tlw)
One thing worth trying is to figure out if this is a Deadline specific problem or a general AE one. On a machine that’s reporting this error, open a command prompt and run this command:
Note that you should copy your aepx project file locally, and then adjust the path to the -project argument as necessary. You can find this aepx file by right-clicking on the job in the Monitor and selecting View Repository Directory (CTRL+D).
Note that you may need to adjust the -output path as well, since the AfterEffectsOutput_tempfonUT0 folder it’s pointing to probably won’t exist when you run this test.
We’re checking to see if you get the same error message when Deadline is removed from the equation.
Thanks for your help Ryan. The command line gave me the same error so clearly there’s something up with After Effects. I appreciate your help in troubleshooting that and I’ll see if I can chase down the issue in Adobe’s forums. If I find an answer I’ll post back here.