Quicktime generation errors

Deadline
1

Well my bad day is continuing. . . I just wrote a LONG message, which got erased when I hit submit, because I had somehow been logged out of the forums. Arggh.

In the course of writing the long message, I actually discovered what may be the cause of the trouble (and inadvertanly, the reason I got logged out since I went back and tried a few things :)

Cutting to the chase now. My issue was with QT generation and its mishandling of one of my queued jobs. I ran a Max8 job. Then ran an AE job with those files, finally running a QT generation on the AE job. First two versions worked A-OK. Version 3 failed to make a proper QT file. Instead, making a 2 frame file with the first frame from the v.2 pass files and the second frame with the second file from v.3 pass. DL did not give an error, but said the job completed A-OK.

My file naming was like this:

Assembly.v1.1920x1080_00000.tif, Assembly.v2.1920x1080_00000.tif, Assembly.v3.1920x1080_00000.tif.

They are all in the same folder.

And that appears to be the issue.

All files in all versions are A-OK and load into AE, Fusion, or other programs fine. However, if you open QT Player and use Load File Seq and load the first frame of v.3, QT does bad things. It loads two frames, the first from v.2 and the second from v.3. Then it names the file based on the v.2 file name, not the v.3 file name I told it to load. Clearly QT is having issues with multiple sequences in the same folder, and because of this, DL is getting fooled into make an improper QT file.

When I moved the files to separate directories, then the v.3 files loaded A-OK into QT Player. I can only assume DL would then make a proper file.

I'm on WinXPproSP3. The files are .tif and the res is HD 1080p. I had never used QT Player to compile a QT before, so I have never encountered this issue.

I'm a one-man shop and I have just downloaded DL to try it out, previously thinking it was more than I needed. After only 2 days of evaluating it, I think its a fantastic program with a wealth of features. I use Max, AE, Combustion and Fusion, so DL covers all my bases. The AE queuing is totally great. The QT generation is one thing that caught my attention, among many other features. Really good job guys. Not being a big studio, my needs are surely different than your typical client. Putting multiple versions of files in one directory is surely a no-no at any facility, other than my shop ;) But I will now stay away from that practice also :)

I can't be totally sure QT is the culprit, but it surely is the front runner. If you need any log files or more info, please let me know.

Thanks,

-David

2

Forgot this bit from my lost message.

Is there any abiltiy from the manager to move files seq and or rename seq keeping all the links in an archived queue intact?

I've only been using the Free Trail for 2 days so forgive me if this is in the manual, I have not gotten through it all yet ;)

-David

3

Hi David,



Glad to hear you got it all sorted out, and thanks for the info about

having multiple sequences in the same folder. Usually this isn’t a

problem, but perhaps having the resolution and padding in the same part

of the filename was confusing QT. At least the workaround is simple

enough. :slight_smile:



There isn’t a way to move or rename file sequences from within Deadline,

although Deadline does have scripting capabilities that might allow you

to do so:

http://software.franticfilms.com/index.aspx?page=deadline/scripting



More specifically, you could probably write a Monitor Job script:

http://software.franticfilms.com/index.aspx?page=deadline/scripting/monitorjobs



Cheers,

4

Hello Ryan,

Thanks for the comments and advice. I'll have to poke around and see if your right about the other numbers in file name being the culprit, but my gut tells me you nailed it. Seems like the QT programmers got a little sloppy. It is good to know that DL should not have issues with multiple versions in the same directory. Keeps me from having to "scold" myself ;)

-David