I know that some UI colors can be set (I’ve already tweaked a few which is great!), but can the colors of the progress bars in the Job Monitor be set?
Also, is there a way to make the progress bars themselves bigger/longer? For example, the bars are about 1" long but I have the dialog about 5" wide. Would be nice to have them larger so they could more easily be seen when glancing from across the room.
Thanks!
Hey Mike,
The progress bar color and size cannot be changed in the Job Monitor.
In Deadline 6, the Job Monitor will actually be discontinued. It was originally intended to be a light-weight version of the Monitor to only show specific jobs, but we feel that the new filtering system in the v6 Monitor makes the Job Monitor redundant. There is also a new layout pinning system, so you could create a layout that is similar to the old Job Monitor and pin it. This will allow you to toggle between that layout and another one.
Cheers,
Ryan,
Thanks for the info. In D6, will there be some form of a progress bar as jobs render? Or are you saying I can setup a progress bar using the new layout tools?
Thanks again.
It’s on our wish list. Currently, there is the same progress column that exists in D5 in the Monitor.
Thanks for the info. Cast my wish for it too as I’m a visual person and it’s far easier for me to glance at a progress bar to determine progress than to have to read small text to determine what’s going on.
Also, on the Task Progress Column, it would be great if there was another space or two between the percent and task to make it easier to read when glancing quickly at it. For example:
100% 601/601
would become
100% 601/601
Just another wish.
Thanks again.
Hmmm… looks like the forum edited my spaces. Perhaps this would show it better:
100%_601/601
vs
100%___601/601
Thanks!
Makes sense! We’ll add this to the wish list too.
Thanks!
-Ryan
Deadline 6 does have a graph for tasks of a job that you can look at, which is a very visual way to see how the whole job is completing - even from across the room. it’s very easy to setup
cb
Hmmm… I’ve been thinking a bit more about this.
Chris…If your talking about using the render time graph as a visual progress bar. It does work… sort of. It is visible from across the room and is OK, for looking at a single job.
But the way I work, it’s not as good as a true progress bar and preferrably… multiple progress bars. Here’s why.
Lets say I submit 5 MAX render jobs and 5 compositing jobs to Deadline.
MAX1
MAX2
MAX3
MAX4
MAX5
COMP1
COMP2
COMP3
COMP4
COMP5
The compositing jobs will use the footage generated by the MAX jobs, so the jobs are prioritized so all slaves render the jobs in order. All slaves work on MAX1, then MAX2, etc. With the current setup, I have to add all the jobs to the Job Monitor to get progress bars for all. When I submit the jobs I move on to work on something else on a different computer. But I like to be able to glance at the Monitor computer to see how all the jobs are progressing. The Job Monitor currently lets me do this (although it’s not ideal). The Render Time Graph lets me see a graph for a single selected job (but it’s a graph not a progress bar and I would prefer the simple bar… at this point I don’t care so much about what the render time per frame is. Just want to know the job progress). But I have to go over to the Monitor computer just to click on the next job to see the pseudo-progress bar for it. I can’t see the progress of all jobs at a glance like I can with the Job Monitor.
If the Job Monitor were being kept, the improvements I would like to see are resizeable progress bar zone so the bars can be made longer and more visable from a distance. The ability to change to bar colors (the current color selections are very hard to see). Some user setting that would automatically add jobs to the Job Monitor so the user didn’t have to.
With no Job Monitor, what I would like to see is the Task Progress column redone to include a progress bar. For example, you could keep the same info in the column 50%__50/100 but make the background of the column the progress bar. When the user glanced at the job list from a distance, they could instantly tell which job was being rendered, which jobs were complete, which jobs were next, etc. The user could resize the column to get whatever size progress bar they wanted… making it even easier to see from across the room.
Bottom line, I don’t want to read ‘War & Peace’ just to get basic info like job progress… I want to see a simple progress bar. If D6 has an easy way for me to setup a progress bar, fine. But I’m not a coder so I can’t script one myself.
Just my thoughts. Thanks!
D6 already has a progress bar in the job’s progress column. 
Cheers,
Ryan,
Excellent. Thanks for this info!