Network Rendering is driving me crazy!!!

transco wrote on 5/28/2004, 1:18 PM

I bought V5 specifically for the Network Rendering feature. I set up a 1000baseT network and a pair of 3.4GHz P4's to do the rendering. Problem is the thing just doesn't work worth a darn. Apparently my main problem is File Mapping, in that the errors I get are usually "Some media may not be shared". No question the computers, drives, folders, etc. are shared, so it comes down to the file mapping issue. I have audio and video clips, stills, etc. located in hundreds of directories on the network. While only 30 or 40 directories might be use for any given project, it is a major pain sorting all that out to fill in the File Map. For years I've used Xvid which uses distributed rendering and none of this foolishness is required. What's the secret? If there is anyone out there using network rendering, please tell me how you are handling the file mapping issue. In addition to trying to make note of all the directories I use for any given project, usually the directories are nested several layers deep and more often than not, I'll get the path entered wrong anyway.

Comments

DataMeister wrote on 5/28/2004, 3:07 PM

I agree. This method of network rendering is painfully over complicated. It would be nice if the server application would just take care of sending out the necesary files, no matter where on the system the files are located.

And while we are at it, it would be nice to specify a scratch disc for the rendering process and assembly that is different than the location of the final product.

JBJones

db wrote on 5/28/2004, 5:03 PM

i've been using NRS quite a bit ...
i capture whole 60 min tapes and render out to one folder .. i have apporx 18 folders mapped between 8 hard drives. i also map to one folder on each of the renderers in case i save to them. i do not do the bin thing.

i did have a project with 100 persons interviewed each in their own folder. there was NO way i was going to map 100 folders + ...
once editing was locked i did a SAVE AS with copy and trim media = now all media is sitting in one folder. from here i split the audio tracks, did color correction, added music = mapped 3 folders ..

johnmeyer wrote on 5/28/2004, 6:02 PM

I had a bunch of problems getting network render to run as well. I wrote up some of my findings and experiences in the following posts. Perhaps these "instructions" may help you:

Network render bugs, suggestions, & solutions

Also:

Network Render Directions

transco wrote on 5/29/2004, 12:06 PM

Besides the miserable file mapping, I've found a couple of other things that are very strange, if not flat out wrong. I am working on a production that has Chinese charcaters in several titles. Shows up fine on the editing computer, but once renedered on a network computer, the Chinese characters are replaced with garbage. Render it on the host, and characters are correct. From this I assume character titles are being 'built' on the rendering computer, and if it doesn't have a particular font called for in the source, it doesn't work. It would seem to me the Host would provide whatever resources were required. At the very least, a message should be sent back to the Host saying that some resource is missing (the same thing should hold true on file paths the renderer can't resolve. If it can't find something, put it in the log so we have a fighting chance of finding out what's going wrong.).

To try and speed things up a bit, I tried putting the source files on the rendering computer (different spindle from the output). I figured this way I'd cut down the network latency. No such luck. I don't know what it is doing, but even with both input and output files on the rendering computer, I can tell from the activity lights on the LAN switch that the network is being used to capacity. What for?