JOB ETA in Aftereffects Plugin

Deadline
1

Something that has been a constant issue for me in our workflow is that the AE plugin does not show anything in the Estimated Remaining Render Time field when rendering a final output (not image sequences) even though the plugin knows:

  • When the job started
  • What frame we are on
  • How many total frames to render

To solve this for myself I have a python script that takes the current running time, and percent complete and spits out an estimate based on the information given when the job might be done.

py guess-o-meter.py
Enter Running Time (H:M:S) 1:15:00
Enter Complete %: 33

Start Time: 2023-02-08 09:27:24.424097
ETA:             2023-02-08 13:14:40.787733
Time to Go:  2:32:16.363636

This is often all the detail I need, however, it’s a manual process that is very inconvenient when I have 20 or 30 jobs of different lengths rendering.

I look a look at the AE plugin and some other plugins and found that perhaps if I update the plugin in the HandleStdoutFrameProgress I might be able to force Deadline to populate these fields.

taking some guesses at how this might work I think I would need to manipulate the following?:

self.RemainingTime = “00:01:00”
self.CurrentFrame = 0
self.ElapsedTime = “00:02:00”
self.AverageTime = “00:00:01”

Messing around I have not found the magic key to get this working.

Is there some way I can give the plugin a hint as to what the ETA should be?

2

The Estimated Remaining Render Time on the Job panel is not populated by the job plugin but its a separate C# code running on the job for the monitor. Here is a function which is calculating the estimate:

        public double GetEstimatedRemainingTime()
        {
            double estimatedRemainingTime;

            double completedFrames = this.m_completedFrames;
            double framesLength = this.Frames.Length;
			double renderingChunks = this.m_renderingChunks;
			double remainingFrames = framesLength - renderingChunks - completedFrames;

			if (completedFrames > 0 && renderingChunks > 0) // job has been started
            {
				double avgSecondsPerFrame = this.TotalRenderTime.TotalSeconds / completedFrames;
				double estimatedQueuedRemaining = remainingFrames * avgSecondsPerFrame;

				//divide by Workers working on job to get 'real' time
				estimatedRemainingTime = estimatedQueuedRemaining / renderingChunks;
			}
            else
            {
                estimatedRemainingTime = Double.MaxValue;
            }

            return estimatedRemainingTime;
        }

Is there a delay on populating the estimate rendering time or it doesn’t show anything in the Monitor job panel?

3

Thanks for the information.

It doesn’t show anything in all of the time I’ve used the AE plugins.

4

For example, this is all I see in the jobs panel.

image

So entering this into my script I get close, it’s obviously not perfect but close enough for my needs.

guess-o-meter
Running Time (H:M:S) 0:8:17
Complete %: 6.83
Start: Time: 2023-02-12 10:21:59.681608
ETA: 2023-02-12 12:23:16.401959
Time to Go: 1:52:59.720351

I would expect these to take between 1 and 2 hours.