Hi Guys,
as I’ve read before AE is really bad at outputting information, for example to set automatic limits based on the plugins used in a project.
I was recently pointed at the AE function “COLLECT FILES”.
[b]
[/b]
This function output’s a TXT file with, amongst other info, a list of effects used.
Will this be of any help?
I’m not sure actually. Does anyone else have experience with this? I’m a bit swamped to set up a project, but if someone has an example file laying around it’d be neat to see what kind of information is there. If it helps us troubleshooting things better, I’m all for it.
This is the exact output of a Comp I ran this on.
The only effect I’m using is Neat Video reduce Noise:
Notice the “Effect: Reduce Noise v4”
That output could be searched by Deadline (before it starts rendering the job) to find out which effects are being used.
It could then be attached to limits if it finds a match for “Reduce Noise v4” (which we have a certain amount of licenses for).
Automatic Limits in a sense.
I like this idea! The way I see this working is simply for our submitter to capture all effects/plugins used in a particular comp and include that info with an AE job when submitted. Then users can hook up an event plugin via onJobSubmitted which auto applies 1 or more Deadline “limits” based on a string search match of a certain effect name in a submitted comp/proj to a corresponding limit name. Hmm…needs a bit more thought, but I like it. I’ll add it to our wishlist. Thanks for the feedback!
Great!
It would help us so much as we now have our users add limits themselves to the submitter screen but they mostly forget something.
The thing is, this collection report report’s all plugins in the .aep file.
Which is actually good as some plugins like Element and Heat Distortion are badly coded in a sense that they show their license login screen (which hangs AE) even when the plugin is not used in that specific comp, just when it’s in the script.
Cool. I wouldn’t look at using the collection report, but rather use AE’s javascripting language to parse the AE proj/comps and gather the information.
We have other solutions to handle pop-up dialogs / ‘known’ bad messages (StdOut/StdErr) / states that AE can get itself into. We just need to be provided with examples of how to reproduce this issue and ideally, a couple of error/log reports from the Deadline job displaying the issue. Then we can investigate what we can do to better handle any misbehaving plugins, effects, etc. Worst case scenario, we can at least error our gracefully and let you know why we bombed.
For Element and Heat Distortion… I would say just download the installers for AE:
Install heat and Element
Put these effects in your comp on a layer, you will get an activation box. Dont activate.
Send the comp for render
On the rendernode you are presented with the license box when your node starts the ae project. It should hang waiting for input.
*Even if you are not using the element or heat distortion effect in the comp you are rendering, it will present the box.