Here's a tough one

Deadline
1

Background:

We use After Effects projects as templates. When orders come in, we grab the template from it current location, move it to a new location, swap out the assets from the (footage) folder, and render. We NEVER open the copy before submitting to the render queue, and AE picks up all the correct assets without looking back to their original location.

Problem:
When we submit the jobs via deadline, it always tries to look back to the original location rather than using the local assets. How can we force it to connect to the correct files?

If we submit it in code without first opening the project file in the AE interface, we don’t get connected to the correct files. But, if we first open the project and save at the new location, it renders correctly using the new assets.

Hopefully that is clear. We’re stumped on this one and would really appreciate any help.

2

Before I attempt to help with this problem, I should mention that Deadline just uses AE’s command line renderer, aerender.exe, to do the rendering. Deadline isn’t controlling where AE looks for footage, so maybe this is an issue with AE’s command line renderer.

That being said, is the new location that you move the project file (and therefore the footage you want to point to) on a local path, or somewhere else on the network? If it’s on the network, are you submitting the job with the “Submit Project File With Job” option enabled? If so, try submitting it without the option checked. Deadline will then use the project file directly on the network for rendering, so that may help it find the correct footage.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Ryan,

Thanks for the help with this. We were able to use this post in combination with another to get the aep file to stay put and look locally for the footage to build the outputs. We used the SceneFile to handle that. We had to use the mac address as we are using mac’s to render, but the repository lives on a Windows machine.

Your comment about Deadline just uses the AE command line render has got us thinking and we would like a little clarification on a few points. The AE Render documentation talks about the –output output_path, –OMtemplate
output_module_template, and –comp comp_name which we have questions about.

  1. We are currently using the Comp= in the plugin file. The AE documentation talks about if the comp name is not in the render queue then it will add it to the render queue and then render it. Is that true? We have 3 Output Module Templates for each render. We had to manually add each comp to the render queue and add those output templates to each one. That will be very time consuming if we decide to make a small change. Using that without the comp in the render queue.

  2. That brings me to the Output Module Template argument. We have three output module templates for each job submitted. Can I add those dynamically when submitting and if so could you give me an idea on how I can go about doing that?

  3. And finally Output Path - I have tried to use the OutputDirectory0 in the job file, but it is either being ignored based on me supplying a bad path or it does not work the way we thought it would. While we were manually adding all the comps to the render queue and adding the output modules some of our projects did not get the right output path. This exposed a big issue if we ever need to go and update a project for some reason. That is why we began trying to specify the output directory in the job file. Can you tell me if we are thinking that it will work like we are thinking and if so can you tell me what that path might look like since we are rendering on a mac and the repository lives on a Windows machine.

Thanks
Tracy

4

Great! Glad to hear you’re making progress.

  1. If the AE documentation confirms this, than I guess it’s true. :smiley: Hehe, in all honesty, we weren’t even aware of this, but assuming it works, we can see how that would come in handy.

  2. Our AE plugin currently doesn’t expose this feature. Maybe we could look at exposing the RS and OM template options in Deadline 4.0, so that you could specify these. Currently, the only solution would be to edit the AE plugin yourself.

  3. The OutputDirectory0 setting in the job file just tells Deadline where the output is being saved to so that it knows where to look for it. This information isn’t actually passed on to AE. In the plugin info file (where you specify SceneFile and Comp), the setting you want to use is:

Output=...

The output path you specify is the full path, including file name, and [####] for the frame padding. As long as this path is available on your mac render nodes, you should be fine.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

  • Ryan
5

Ryan,

Thanks for the info. On the output on you mention that I need to specify the whole path including file name and [#####] for the frame padding. we have three outputs that come from AE - one for Standard Def, High def, etc… Do I specify each one or what?

I think I was hoping I could specify where I wanted the output to go and it would use the Output Template Modules set up, but maybe that is not the case.

Thanks
Tracy

6

Are the 3 outputs for the same comp, or for separate comps? If they’re for separate comps, then I guess you would be able to submit 3 jobs, and specify the comp and corresponding output for each.

If the 3 outputs are for a single comp, then I guess the output path option won’t work (based on the aerender documentation). Maybe first see if what you’re trying to accomplish is possible when using aerender from the command line. If it is, then it should be doable through Deadline. We can then figure out if it can be done with the existing AE plugin, or if a custom one might need to be developed.

Cheers,

  • Ryan