Command Line Render Hangs (stat U+) On Mac

[user_deleted]

Corrupted image or video file ?

[user_deleted]

Nope, totally random. It might render 100 frames or 10000.

[user_deleted]

well s-macd, sorry to hear you're having the same problem, but im glad to hear im not the only one! the problem went back to being very occasional again for me, so i wasn't as incentivised to find a cure.

just happened again yesterday on a 989 frame shot. crashed around 450. switched to another comp and it finished just fine. that's the second time it's happen in the last week or so.

there are only two factors i seem to notice with this:

1) it only happens with large files. 98% of the time this happens it's been with 2k cineons. i think it happened once with some hd files (which i only remember because it destroyed my "only with 2k cineons" theory), but i've never seen it with smaller files.

if the problem is file size related it might not be either or, just much rarer with smaller sizes and thus not encountered as often. also, i primarily work with 2k cineons, so i haven't tested smaller sized files as much.

2) it only happens thru a command line render. i've never had this happen when rendering via the gui (shake viewer).

i use five mostly identically configured dual-core g5s. four are used remotely as part of a render-farm and one is one of my desktop units. i used to get weird stall-outs every now and again with qmaster which i now believe is the result of this problem (one machine would stop causing the render to be incomplete).

i use shell scripts to create quicktimes via the g5s since qmaster can't do quicktimes. i run qmaster when simply processing individual frames to individual frames.

s-macd, have you tried rendering via the gui to see if that solves the problem? since you seem to be able to recreate it more consistently than i.

[joojaa]

aah yes the magic word is there Qmaster yes its been reported repeatedly that qmater dont play nball with shake all that well. Your definetly not teh firts one to notice this and thsi is not the first thread.

Skip qmaster and see what gives!

[user_deleted]

joojaa, you really are a magic bullet proponent aren't you?

it's not a memory error and it's not qmaster. notice the thread subject? it says "command line" for a reason.

and in contrast to these repeated reports (which i don't necessarily dispute), i've not had any problems with qmaster. it's got a v-e-r-y clunky interface, but has performed as it should consistently for me.

[deke-kincaid]

there is a really simple answer for this. If you are having all these problems for the last 5 months you should be talking to Shake support. Who goes on for 5 months with an issue like this without talking to support?

[user_deleted]

riiiiight...

[user_deleted]

man - this problem is serious when trying to process 4096x4096 frames. sheesh! can't get more than about 20 frames through a shot.

[deke-kincaid]

stop bitching about crap you haven't payed for.

[user_deleted]

wow. you're an ass. someone get up on the wrong side of the bed?

two things:

1) don't talk when you don't know crap about what you're saying. i work for a vfx post-production house and i can assure you these are licenced copies of shake. i just haven't had good experiences with apple help in general and especially with regards to shake - a product they simply bought and had yet to fully integrate, at least at version 3.5, which is what we're running.

2) if you're going to try and insult someone, at least learn how to spell before you do. the word is paid.

[user_deleted]

Right, and I guess by licenced you mean licensed, don't you?

Please note I'm being ironic with the sentence above (I make mistakes aaaall the time, so what?).
I mean, really, I never got the point on these kind of posts in this forum. And then people will still wonder why it got so abandoned...

[user_deleted]

ha, i wondered if someone would point that out. but no, i use licence because my parents are british and i lived there for two years as an adolescent, so i still sometimes use the old country way of spelling and pronouncing certain words.

you are correct about the siliness of these kinds of posts tho.

[deke-kincaid]

The definicion of moroonic. Somehone who purchassesss a software packeage and has a show stopping probleem for sixx monthsss and bitchees aboot it on a messessge board and can't call support.

[user_deleted]

stop bitching about crap you haven't payed for?

1. I kind of figured shelling out nearly $10000 canadian for TWO seats of shake would give me a right to bitch.
2. Last time I checked I was not bitching about it, I was trying to see if anyone else might have some CONSTRUCTIVE feed back.

Guess I was wrong. All I found was a couple of people who were having the same problem and ONE putz who has taken it upon himself to be that loud mouth at a party whom no one can figure out who invited..

Oh and by the way I'm still having the problem.

[user_deleted]

I seem to have discovered a strange solution / work around that works 50% of the time.

After the render hangs up, open another shell while leaving the hung one open. In the new shell launch the same script from 20 or so frames prior to the hang up and voila the hung shell starts rendering again with the render time at some ungodly number like 15478.33s.

It works with image sequences as the output just about all the time and with quicktimes sometimes.

Can't explain it but it works.

[user_deleted]

fascinating! that is bizarre - pity that won't work for my qmaster renders. but i'll definitely give that a try the next time a script freezes.

so how did you figure that one out?

and once the original script starts running again, can you kill the new one? doesn't the new script render over the frames you already outputted? won't that leave you with partial rendered-over frames?

[user_deleted]

Figured it out by accident. Just happens to work often. As far as killing the new scrip, all you do is select an image sequence about 5 frames long and let it run (if you kill it it corrupts frames) or one frame at the end of the sequence.

Oddly enough I also discovered that just opening the original script in shake works as well. Just don't try to save it.

Super wierd.

[user_deleted]

so are you just running a command line command like:

shake -script myscript -t 1-500

?

im actually running a c shell script that actually seds a shake script template, kicks out a new script and then calls that script from the command line.

haven't had a chance to give it a test yet - i'll let you know what i find. i can definitely at least open the shake script in the gui and see if that brings it back to life.

[user_deleted]

wow! opening the script in the shake gui works! amazing. thanks!

[user_deleted]

Probably one of the weirdest bugs I've ever come accross, in any software.