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C4D people: How do you batch submit large projects?

Hi, Cinema 4D friends! Since Deadline has no built-in method to batch submit C4D projects, I am wondering how other people are batch submitting Cinema 4D files to Deadline.

My company had to hire a 3rd party programmer to make a coffee script that loops through the Deadline submission process for individual files. This seems extremely inefficient to me and I am confused why Deadline has no batch submission method for Cinema 4D.

Using our custom script, once the C4D files are manually specified and parameters are manually set for the group of files, the script loops through each C4D file and takes 80 seconds to open and auto-submit it before going to the next one. So 30 files takes 40 minutes to submit, during which time that machine is dedicated to the process and cannot be used. Further more, no other files can be submitted during this process so we have 3 computers dedicated to submitting projects. A full time employee switches between the 3 computers submitting between 10 and 30 files at a time. The whole process seems kind of ridiculous.

Is everyone really using custom made 3rd party scripts to get large groups of C4D files into Deadline? I find this is kind of outrageous and unbelievable after considering the price tag of Deadline and everything it claims it can do. What am I missing?

Hi,
What exact version of Deadline are you using? The ability to batch submit C4D scene files via Monitor has been in Deadline since at least version 5.2 (I just checked). You can submit multiple C4D scene files all at once via the Deadline Monitor -> Submit -> 3D -> Cinema 4D.
If all the C4D scene files are ready to be rendered, there is no need to spend time opening them, just to submit them all at once, batch style.
Of course, if you need to apply different custom settings per C4D scene file, then that would be a different problem, that we can discuss. Which settings? On the subject of price, Deadline 10 announced a 75% price discount. I do agree, that is unbelievable!

I’m using Deadline 8. Thanks for the info on batch submitting. Getting files into Deadline is a major bottleneck for our processes right now and I am trying to solve that.

In the submission window, adding files to the list requires opening and reopening the same dialogue box, and the field to specify the output folder requires accessing a second tab. All this seems fine if you want to add a few files, but this method is not practical as a workflow adding hundreds of files a day. Isn’t there a simple way to open a single dialogue and select the needed files in one go?

Efficiently processing large amounts of files into Deadline in a practical workflow seems to be a problem and I’m wondering what solutions people have invented to solve that.

Mike, I would like to talk to someone about custom solutions for our company, who should I email?

Sure, either technical support via sales@thinkboxsoftware.com

I only see a 6% price increase…

thinkboxsoftware.com/product-pricing/

$48 subs price is $2 less than the annual support for a single license, which is still available at $50 with a perm license still being $195. So, $195 / $48 = 4.06, which equates to slightly over 75% price reduction compared to purchasing a new perm license. Of course, in year 2 onwards or for existing customers, $50 - $48 delivers a $2 saving per license, if you wish to switch out your perm for subs based licenses. Not sure I understand where your 6% increase is coming from?

To steer this back to the OP, it shouldn’t take much to automate submission. I tend to go via DeadlineCommand and build custom job and plugin files. A good starter might be the Draft Watch Folder example here:
github.com/ThinkboxSoftware/Dea … atchfolder

Essentially, whenever a video is dropped in the folder a new Draft job is created. You could do the same with C4D jobs pretty easily.

“build custom job and plugin files”? This is exactly the problem. Apparently Deadline does not have a complete workflow path from submission to rendering. I’ll be reporting to my boss to replace Deadline with a more complete solution for our future company needs.

We try to keep our solution generic enough to suite most users while allowing the flexibility to automate where needed. So far it’s been a great setup for most users.

I haven’t seen any e-mails to the support side at the moment… This week’s a little busy for me, but we should connect and discuss this in detail. My number’s in my signature, but send an e-mail to amsler@amazon.com and we can organize a time. You’re definitely out from the norm here so it’s going to take some thinking.

Mate, I don’t actually think you have had a single look at the Deadline Documentation?
Job and Plugin files are simple text files that list some info about the render (like the path it goes to, what software to start, how many frames to render, etc…) You feed both of these to the deadline command application “et Voila!” your job is created…

If you have any simple skills in batch scripting or python scripting you can easily make a custom submision script…

I am not even properly trained in Python scripting (having learned it through just trying and having to do it for work) and I was able to make a complete customised Nuke Submitter for our company in less than the time it is probably going to take to continue this discussion about how deadline is not worth it’s price (which it definitely is…)

Really, just have a read through the Deadline Manual, a wealth of quality information!

docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produ … -ref-label

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