hi hyan,
we are just evaluating metarender for general fileconversion but also as for rendering out our speedgrade timelines.
the strange thing is: we cannot find a way to set the chunk size…?
there is no option in the submission field and the job is always rendered by one machine only (displaying a chunk size of “0”).
is there anything we´ve missed?
thanks,
timor
omgraphix
Hi Timor,
From our experience with MetaRender, we’ve found that the entire render needs to be performed as a single task on a single machine, which is why there is no option to specify a frame range or a chunk size. With movie files, this is a given, because you can’t have more than one machine writing to the output simultaneously.
With frame sequences, we’ve found that MetaRender always starts writing it’s output to “output0001.ext”, regardless of what the frame range you pass to it is. For example, we have 48 frames padded from 0000 to 0047. If we pass this sequence to MetaRender in chunks of four, this is the result:
0000-0003 renders out to output0001.ext-output0004.ext
0004-0007 renders out to output0001.ext-output0004.ext
0008-0011 renders out to output0001.ext-output0004.ext
etc…
So output frames 0001-0004 are constantly being overwritten. However, if we don’t pass the frame range, MetaRender will render out to output0001.ext-output0048.ext. So the removal of the frame range and chunk size options is out of necessity to ensure that the output files are saved out properly.
Note that we have tested this using the offset command line option, but that doesn’t seem to affect how the output is saved.
Cheers,
Hi Ryan,
i just talked to Patrick from Iridas und it seems at this point there is no way to tell metarender to render in chunks.
Makes it quite useless for us, and i am sure for a lot of other people too.
Off course if you are outputting a movie file, a single node has to take over, this i true for fusion which at this point has a lot more value for us for converting, downsizing, etc…
Speedgrade/Metarender has the great advantage of reading RED files native and the output is rock solid (DPX, tiff, mov). We usually conform a roughcut with Speedgrade and then render out individual Shots for VFX…
I forwarded the problems to Iridas and pointed to this thread, Patrick told me he would get in touch with you guys anyway to find a solution for this.
Thanks,
Timor
P.S. as a sidenote: i would still love to see a color change in the slave icon as soon as it starts to render…any chance to see this in a future release?
Thanks for confirming our suspicions about rendering in chunks, and we look forward to hearing from Patrick.
For the other request, this is something we can consider. What color did you have in mind?
Haha, color really doesn´t matter that much, i just want a visual feedback that the slave i rendering.
having it minimised to a tray icon is a great thing, but sometimes i wonder why my system slows down, only to find out my slave i rendering Maya in the BG 
Orange maybe? (pulse icon color)
Thanks!
OK, cool. We’ve added this request to the wish list.
just to keep you updated:
iridas just released a new beta version of metarender.
one of the new features:
New: MetaRender: Supports -startframe parameter to set the first frame number of the output frame
so this should be fixed in the new version once it´s coming out.
another thing a user was writing on the chunk-size issue (related to rendering RED footage):
“As far as I can tell there is no chance of accessing a single RED R3D file from more than ONE PC client via the RED SDK. They seem to add a file lock, preventing any other app from accessing the same R3D file at the same time. You can test this by opening a file in RED CINE and trying to open it at the same time on another machine.”
this sounds a bit strange to me and i haven´t head a chance of testing it, but will let you know if i find it out to be true…
timor
new update:
iridas (ptarick palmer) said they contacted you regarding the implementation of a chunk-size feature.
please let me know how it goes.
thank you,
timor