render stopping issue

[leszczynska]

Hello all,
I'm having problems rendering QuickTime files (H.264, no conversion, not changing framerate nor any other settings of the project, just as it is) from TVP v 11.0.6-32bits. Sometimes they render just fine, but sometimes (and that's becoming more and more common) the render ("Saving Sequence" window) just disappears before it's finished and creates half-file. I open and close TVPaint, sometimes a few times, and eventually it manages to render the whole thing, but it's pretty annoying and getting more and more common to the point when I'm unable to render anything without opening and closing TVP at least once.

Since I do manage to render the files eventually, I guess it's not the format or anything in my render settings but rather stability of the program issue? Note: it doesn't crash, just stops the render and offers no explanation, creating a file but not completing it. And it's 100% not an issue of having a Mark Out in a wrong place

Edited too add more detail:
When the correct render was successful, after "Saving Sequence" window comes to 100%, it disappears, and so does "Export to..." window. That sometimes happens and it's great.
When I get the half-render, "Saving Sequence" window disappears before reaching 100%, the file created has only a few first frames, and "Export to..." window is still on screen, as if the exporting never happened. Only that the file was created. Once it gets stuck in that mode, I can keep clicking "Export" and it just does the same thing over and over until I close TVPaint and open it again.



Does anyone else has that problem or any solutions?
Is there perhaps some button for enabling TVPaint to access more RAM that I'm missing?
I don't have any other heavy programs opened while working in it, mostly only an internet browser.

Thank you, I need to render about 20-30 files a day so it is becoming an issue for me recently.

[slowtiger]

Did you check if your video editor has the same problems with these settings?

[leszczynska]

sorry, what do you mean by "video editor"? As in, the program called Video Editor? Or some option in TVPaint I'm not aware of?

[Fabrice]

How big is your project ? (Size in GB and Size in pixels)
Can you grab your Quicktime panel settings and post them here ?

[leszczynska]

those are multiple projects, I'm rendering many various shots of different length and have that issue on most of them. Pixel-wise it's 3500x2000 (25fps but animated on twos or even more - long holds, it's only rough animation stage) last few ones I had were 121MB, 61.2MB, 7.67MB and 18MB.

But they don't have very many drawings, some projects have more layers imported as reference but switched off - that's probably what gets their project size to be so big. When I deleted reference layers from the 121MB one, it shrank to 49MB.


Do you mean Quicktime panel settings from TVPaing export window?

[Fabrice]

ok, it's nothing too big for the 32 bits version.
It should work as expected.

Do you mean Quicktime panel settings from TVPaing export window?

yes.

What are your computer specs ? see here : read me first

[leszczynska]

I'm sorry about not mentioning that earlier: Windows 10 (intel(r) xeon(r) cpu e5-2680 v3 2.40ghz, 16GB RAM, 62-bit, os build 14393.1198), TVP Standard, I have a Wacom intuos pro driver (latest version) installed but don't use the tablet for that particular process.

Capt.PNG (22.07 KiB) Viewed 26432 times

It seems to render fine it rendering it the first and only thing I do after opening TVPaint. But if I do anything, even open any other project, it wouldn't render. So in theory I can just keep closing TVP every time I need to render, but it's getting a bit much when rendering many files.

[Fabrice]

Sorry for the late reply. Your computer seems powerful enough to handle the export.
What if you export using the (.mov) FFmpeg ? It's more reliable as Quicktime is depreciated since 2011 by Apple.
I wish to try this before trying to see if it works better with TVPaint Animation 11 Professionnal Edition (64 bit).
Does the same happen when you export a PNG image sequence.
Would you mind sharing your project with us ?

[leszczynska]

Thank you, I've done lost of test since and noticed this problem only happens with H264 compression, anything else in QuickTime mov and indeed Quick Time FFmpeg works (as well as PNG sequence and other export options).
I reinstalled Quick Time, and TVPaint - just in case, but that didn't do much.

Right not I'm getting around it by exporting as FFmpeg or QuickTime with Animation compression and then compressing files again in a third party software to get H264 that client needs - it adds a bit to the workflow but at least I'm getting the renders.

The more I explore that the more I think the fault's somewhere in my computer's settings - my friends with exactly the same TVPaint version as mine (and in fact: much slower computers) can render the same projects without a problem.
I don't think I can share any projects (as it's owned by a studio, not myself, but I could ask, if it wasn't publically then perhaps yes), but since it renders on other computers without any problems - it's probably a dead end.

I know it's kind of a side question, but from the two options I ended up using most instead, which one would you recommend: QuickTime mov with Aniamtion compression, or FFmpeg?

[Elodie]

I know it's kind of a side question, but from the two options I ended up using most instead, which one would you recommend: QuickTime mov with Aniamtion compression, or FFmpeg?

FFmpeg mode uses a Library that is not Apple made, but it gets updated quite often. It rather gives a good compromise between quality and size of the file.

Quicktime mode uses official Apple library which is abandoned since 2011. Animation compression is a lossless compression which means you'll get very heavy files. Not interesting for quick renderings. For final exports, why not (although I prefer to use image sequences instead, especially if you plan to do some compositing on other software).

[Fabrice]

ok, thanks for the explanations leszczynska.

By the way, if possible, try to explain to your client that H264 is everything but a good file format.
It changes the gamma. See here : https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1063696 )

I know it's kind of a side question, but from the two options I ended up using most instead, which one would you recommend: QuickTime mov with Aniamtion compression, or FFmpeg?

FFmpeg, so you are sure it's readable in VLC.

[leszczynska]

Thank you for all the replies, after all I ended up rendering "Animation" codec and compressing to HP64 in another program. Your advice about FFmpeg is good, but running a few tests I noticed "Animation" just renders quicker and time was also an important factor that I didn’t mention. Since I’m compressing anyway, I decided to go with that.

Thank you for also mentioning gamma issues with H264, I’m aware of those but it’s feature-length production and the files I’m handling are work in progress of numerous shots a day going back and forth between studios so file size and time spend rendering were more important than gamma at this stage. I’d never use H264 for final delivery of course

For your reference, some of my colleagues (same TVP version, very similar computers) started noticing the same problem with that settings, but only very sporadically. But then, they only render about 3 projects a day, while I’m going through up to 30 if not more.