Draft Default Scripts

[ifraser]

Hi Everyone,

We are getting very close to our first RC build and so as a part of this we want to compile a list of default scripts that we will ship in the release build to give most users something they can use right out of the box. Here is what we have so far, but i would love to get some feedback on what else we should add, or shouldn’t include. We are looking for options that people can use right of the out of the box, and could later customize into their own scripts as they want to create multiple outputs in a single draft job and other things like that.

Delivery Style Outputs:

Quicktime Generation (including resizing as necessary, equal scaling) for 480,720, 1080 pixel heights
Quicktime Generation (including resize/stretch as necessary, with letterbox as required) for 640,720,1024,1920,2048 pixel widths [D-1,1K,2K,Full HD]

color transforms baking dpx frames (cineon, alexaV3LogC, srgb) to srgb,rec709 quicktimes

These would be supporting the following codecs MJPEG, H264, at 24,25,29.97,30 fps

Internal Use Outputs:

Similar resolutions to Delivery, but include slate/burn-in and frame counter, with place holder for a company logo using Shotgun.
Similar resolutions to Delivery, but include slate/burn-in and frame counter, with place holder for a company logo using Draft UI to enter fields.

Frame Outputs

color transforms linear exrs to cineon, log dpx, dpx linear frames and inverse
frame sequence to contact sheet

Which other options should we ship with? In particular what about going from QT to frames? Is there anything that you would have used out of the box initially?

[MikeOwen]

I assume you will include these scripts in a directory which will get wrapped in the build zip file?
The idea being that these py files are then stored in the Deadline repository and referenced by the submission interface, but then a snapshot version is effectively submitted with each Draft job?
Just checking on intended workflow. I wouldn’t want the py scripts to be auto-sync deployed to the individual slave “draft” directories, just like the main Draft binaries are. I don’t believe this would be as flexible.

The default scripts look good. We have other custom resolutions we have to deliver to, so ability to control resolution via UI would be useful as well as “auto-calculating the resolution” if the user does a RC “Submit Draft Job” from a current job in the queue. ie: you could grab the first frame in each output sequence coming from a particular job and then auto-insert this info into the Draft submission UI.

I would still like to have greater control of the various output image formats and their individual settings. ie: PNG, TIF, JPEG.

I agree with Paul that the “quality=0-130” videoEncoder setting should be re-factored to the range 0-100%. Makes more sense. Default value of 85 is working well for us!

Does the Draft event plugin handle multiple output sequences coming from the same 3dsMax job. ie: Does it support handling multiple render passes and converting them all into individual *.mov’s for example?

Also, a global issue about Draft. When outputting an image or movie file, this file is directly written straight back to the output directory, which is typically a studio’s network file server. Depending on quality of IT setup in their studio / performance of their file server + quality of network, etc; Draft will be dependent on no tech. issues here, which users of Draft may well incorrectly cite as being a Draft weakness / bug. So, how about, by default, Draft creates the output image/movie or whatever it is, to the local slave’s “temp” directory and then does a File.Copy at the correct time of the job. I’ve done this for years with the Max jobs and takes a good load of the studio file server when under heavy load.

Finally, please can all Draft jobs provide “overall job progress” & “task render status” as the individual frames or movie is generated. Deadline has all the functionality, just need you guys to hook it up, please!

Sorry Ian, not quite the comments you were probably looking for, but things that cropped up this week after finally having a play with Draft! (Probably more ideas / comments to come, over the next few weeks, if you want to hold on shipment to capture this info)

Thanks,
Mike

[im_thatoneguy]

I would add a quick and easy way to generate Half Resolution Proxy JPEGs from all of the above in addition to quicktimes. A lot of compositors seem to use that in Nuke for proxy mode.

IN: Alexa ProRes LogC
OUT: DPX Cineon(Log)
OUT: Half Res JPEG (sRGB)
OUT: Full Res JPEG (sRGB)

Of course BatchDraft solves most of these problems.

Want to just ship Batch Draft with v1haha.