Author Topic: Animation - losing frames  (Read 6226 times)

2020-08-09, 13:13:46

Designerman77

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Hey guys out there.

Anyone experienced losing a bunch of frames during animations?

From 200 frames, this morning 106 were simply gone. No chance to recover them.

Pretty angry!

2020-08-09, 23:29:36
Reply #1

Designerman77

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Again... frames lost.

This time despite having switched off computer sleep mode / screen saver, etc.

Dunno if this is a Corona problem or related to C4D ???

2020-08-10, 10:58:23
Reply #2

mmarcotic

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Hello Designerman77,

I have just tried to render a scene with 107 frames with both native C4D renderer and Corona renderer on Windows 10, C4D R20, Corona v6 RC2. Both have resulted in 0 loss of animation frames.
Can you please share some further information with us? Such information would include:
OS and Hardware specs
C4D and Corona version
scene in which the bug is reproduced

I will try and render the scene on Mac later today.

Thank you,
Jan

EDIT: logged internally @ 547459475
« Last Edit: 2020-08-10, 11:03:02 by mmarcotic »
Learn how to report bugs for Corona in C4D here.

2020-08-10, 11:59:43
Reply #3

mmarcotic

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I have tested it on Mac as well, C4D S22, Corona v6 RC2, still did not lose any animation frames.
Can you also attach a print screen of your render settings?

Thanks!
Learn how to report bugs for Corona in C4D here.

2020-08-10, 14:03:57
Reply #4

TomG

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We'd need more info please - when you say lost, what do you mean? The frames are being saved to disk, (ie save file is enabled, and a filename and filepath given)? Are they there to start with, then get deleted? Your screen shot just shows the PV render history, and I don't know much about that personally (never use it as a way to check frames, I always save them to disk)

Also of course, Corona version, C4D version, OS version, etc.

EDIT - also, were you using Team Render at all, or was this all just one local machine?
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2020-08-10, 16:51:11
Reply #5

Designerman77

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We'd need more info please - when you say lost, what do you mean? The frames are being saved to disk, (ie save file is enabled, and a filename and filepath given)? Are they there to start with, then get deleted? Your screen shot just shows the PV render history, and I don't know much about that personally (never use it as a way to check frames, I always save them to disk)

Also of course, Corona version, C4D version, OS version, etc.

EDIT - also, were you using Team Render at all, or was this all just one local machine?




Hey Tom, thanks for your reply!
Yes, the .mov-file has a file saving path.

Update on the strange frame-behavior from yesterday: when the rendering of all frames is completed, the first 22 frames that - as you see, first disappeared - reappeared again in the end.

So, I guess the system kind of deactivates them during the render process... for whatever reason. Maybe to save RAM? I can't really imagine this.
I have seen this strange behavior also on former test renderings in much lower resolution, that take much less RAM, etc.
So I guess it might be a bug in C4D? Or in Corona?


System: C4D R21, Corona V5
OS catalina 10.15.
Mac Pro 2019 16 core, 3,2 GHz, 48 GB RAM, Radeon Pro W5700X 16 GB

Rendered only on one machine, no TR.


















2020-08-10, 16:53:14
Reply #6

Designerman77

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I have tested it on Mac as well, C4D S22, Corona v6 RC2, still did not lose any animation frames.
Can you also attach a print screen of your render settings?

Thanks!

Hey, thanks for asking.

Render settings are left totally basic. Only the noise level is on 4.
Resolution: 1920x1080


2020-08-10, 16:58:00
Reply #7

Designerman77

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Hello Designerman77,

I have just tried to render a scene with 107 frames with both native C4D renderer and Corona renderer on Windows 10, C4D R20, Corona v6 RC2. Both have resulted in 0 loss of animation frames.
Can you please share some further information with us? Such information would include:
OS and Hardware specs
C4D and Corona version
scene in which the bug is reproduced

I will try and render the scene on Mac later today.

Thank you,
Jan

EDIT: logged internally @ 547459475



Hey Jan,

as mentioned meanwhile bit lower: I noticed that the frames seem to disappear during the render process - and seem to re-appear when rendering is finished.

If you save the movie manually during the render, your missing frames will also be missing in the saved video file.
And in case C4D or Corona might crash, of course no chance to get the frames that were "deactivated" during rendering.... as they only reappear at the end of the complete render process.


2020-08-10, 17:13:02
Reply #8

TomG

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BTW, never render to .mov or other animation format, always to a series of still frames, and composite into animation later.

- If the power goes out in the middle of writing an animation format, you have to start the render from the beginning. With a sequence of stills, you just start from the first still that was not rendered already.

- If you discover your animation compression is all wrong, you have to start the render from the beginning. With compositing stills, you can tweak the movie compression in post just by re-encoding the stills

And so on :)
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2020-08-10, 18:02:53
Reply #9

Designerman77

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BTW, never render to .mov or other animation format, always to a series of still frames, and composite into animation later.

- If the power goes out in the middle of writing an animation format, you have to start the render from the beginning. With a sequence of stills, you just start from the first still that was not rendered already.

- If you discover your animation compression is all wrong, you have to start the render from the beginning. With compositing stills, you can tweak the movie compression in post just by re-encoding the stills

And so on :)


Hey Tom, thanks for the tip. Yes, I had read about this a while ago in threads.

Gonna do it in future.
But right now I was too lazy to bother with one more step in the workflow. :)
The frickin project is already so complex that my mind says: "let me rest bit". :))))))


 





2020-08-10, 21:09:59
Reply #10

Designerman77

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General question to all of you guys:

I do get some non-beautiful flickering, big splotches in some areas. Could it be from too high denoising (0.8) ?
This would be my guess.

In the yellow balconies.
Noise level is quite low... 4
« Last Edit: 2020-08-10, 21:31:54 by Designerman77 »

2020-08-10, 21:44:39
Reply #11

TomG

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Looks more like cache flickering, UHD Cache for example if you are using it. Make sure "Animation (flicker free)" is checked for the Cache, rather than "Still". You could also try calculating and saving the Cache. See https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515648-how-to-use-uhd-cache-for-animations-and-stills-

Or you could try using Path Tracing rather than a Cache (or you could try the 4K Cache, if you are using Corona 6 RCs, just to see).
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2020-08-10, 22:41:02
Reply #12

Designerman77

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Looks more like cache flickering, UHD Cache for example if you are using it. Make sure "Animation (flicker free)" is checked for the Cache, rather than "Still". You could also try calculating and saving the Cache. See https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515648-how-to-use-uhd-cache-for-animations-and-stills-

Or you could try using Path Tracing rather than a Cache (or you could try the 4K Cache, if you are using Corona 6 RCs, just to see).



Hi Tom, thanks a lot for your reply.

Flicker free is activated.

I did not activate saving the precomputation file because in my tests this resulted in visibly wrong GI on many surfaces.
It looked like there was an additional light source in the front of the scene...

Strange...


As GI solver at the moment I have the UHD on.

Gonna stop the animation and give it at try with the path tracing as secondary solver.



Regarding the 4K cache: is 6 RC already stable enough?
Would have loved to give it a try - especially for the 4k-cache... but haven't dared, since people report so many bugs.

I guess I'll give it a try anyway... :)



P.S. Would you recommend to lower the denoiser (0.8 currently), since my noise level is anyway set to 4% ?

Thanks in advance!

« Last Edit: 2020-08-10, 22:48:45 by Designerman77 »

2020-08-10, 23:03:38
Reply #13

TomG

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Yep would recommend the denoiser - unless you run til noise is down to about 2%, denoising is a good idea (and sometimes even then).

Doing a "generate the UHD Cache" using Load and Append as mentioned in the article, rather than use just one saved UHD Cache from the first camera position, may be the best option. Still shouldn't look THAT different though, and certainly not like an extra light - feel free to share a comparison frame that shows the differences, or raise a bug report via forum or ticket, if you think something is not working as it should.

The 4K Cache is still experimental in the RCs at the moment, so, it may be worth a try, but definitely keep a version of the scene NOT saved from Corona 6 (as once you save it in Corona 6, it is not guaranteed to work in Corona 5 and earlier). Do treat it as an experiment, and take all necessary precautions!

If you use Path Tracing, you may (or may not) get better results, but it may take more time to render (in this case, the lighting in question is on the underside of the balcony, so is almost certainly bounced light of some sort, which is where the Caches come in). May still be worth trying though, as avoiding any flicker can be more important than overall render time.

Let us know how you get on!
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2020-08-10, 23:08:42
Reply #14

Designerman77

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Looks more like cache flickering, UHD Cache for example if you are using it. Make sure "Animation (flicker free)" is checked for the Cache, rather than "Still". You could also try calculating and saving the Cache. See https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515648-how-to-use-uhd-cache-for-animations-and-stills-

Or you could try using Path Tracing rather than a Cache (or you could try the 4K Cache, if you are using Corona 6 RCs, just to see).


Hey Tom, yes... seems like it was caused by UHD as GI solver.

Switching to path tracing eliminates that ugly GI splotch-flickering. But: it also calculates ca 20% longer... :/



P.S. after having saved the UHD cache to a file, should the menu point "After Render" be set back to "discard" ? Or can it remain on "save" ?



EDIT: problem solved thanks to your hints, Tom.
Saved the UHD cache. Now those splotches are gone, PLUS the renders now take 11% less for every frame. :)
That's one hour less for those 200 frames and for sure 4-5 hours in the whole project.

Very cool !


General observation: using "path tracing" as secondary solver generates a visibly nicer, less biased light calculation.
But the increase of 10-20 % render time is not worth ist in this specific project.
For other projects I will consider it though.

 
Thumbs up to you Tom!
Again showing how great the Corona customer "doctors" are.
None of our questions is too "dumb" for you guys, you are always going help.

10/10 !

« Last Edit: 2020-08-10, 23:52:51 by Designerman77 »