Video Rendering Oddities
Lord_Ashes
Posts: 91
I have read posts indicating that the preferred way to render video in DAZ Studio is to use Image Sequences and then to use third party software to generate the video. I will try this to see if it overcomes some of the following oddities that I get with rendering video directly in DAZ Studio. Here is a list of oddities that I have noticed.
1. Although a codec selection is provided when saving the video the only codec option is uncompressed. In most other software that I have seen, when the codec dialog is shown it enumerates all the codecs available on the machine (instead of using codecs provided by the software) so that it is easy to add new codecs. This does not seem to be the case. If the codec dialog always only shows the uncompressed option then why provide the selection at all? Or do I need to download DAZ Studio codes?
2. In a number of scene renderings, DAZ Studio crashes with an error. The last time this happened, if I rendered (video) using Intermediate Open GL engine then it crashed immediately. If I used the 3D Delight engine then it rendered about 150 frames (of 900) and then crashed. In a previous scene, this seemed to be attributed to a overly complex model. However, if that was the case I would have expected it to crash immediately and not render 150 frames before crashing. Is there any long that I can review to try to identify the cause?
3. When I render video, with the uncompressed codec, it seems to have some odd format. If I play the file back directly then it either does not play at all (I am guessing because of the fact that the file indicates a 0 duration even though it seems to have a correct file size) or the playback is in odd colors and the screen is shifted or diagonal. If I run the file through a video editing software, it is able to recover it and produce a valid file (with a correct duration).
Anyone seen similar issues?
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Comments
Yes . . . . . and why I use image series
not tried avi in yonks though
I guess if I use the image series and then use 3rd party tool to create the video, it would eliminate issue #1 and #3 and maybe even issue #2 if the crash is due to combining the images into video as opposed to actual rendering.
The other advantage is if you are using the image series then if it does crash during rendering you can just continue from the last successful frame without really losing all that previous rendering time.
I'll give it a try and see what happens. Thanks.
I tried using the Image Sequence and DAZ Studio crashed at frame 150. I tried re-loading it and continuing at frame 150 (i.e. rendering from frame 150 to end of animation) and, once again, it crashed on that frame.
It went through creating the shadow map for "OfficeSpotLight" twice and then started render (I'm talking about the messages on the render dialog) but died part of the way through that step.
I re-load it, did the same thing, and this time it started with an Optimizing Images n/40 step and then it managed to render frame 150 (and beyond).
EDIT: Found the reason for the success the second time. I was using the wrong camera. As soon as I switched to using the desired camera I always get a consistant DAZ Studio crash on frame 150.
I don't know what is so special about frame 150. There is very little animation in the scene. Just the camera is moving (doing a walk through) and some minor movements of one Genesis figure. I am guessing if the problem was with a corrupt model or at too-high poly count model then it would crash earlier.
Does anyone know how I can try to trouble shoot this? Are there any logs that I can check? I see some sort of a message flash by in the render dialog but it clears too fast (can't even catch it with a print screen).
maybe try loading a new camera copying the other camera, I have no idea but something odd must be going on with that camera
I completely removed the camera and then created a new one (even with a different name). I approx re-created the walkthrough path for the camera and tried to render.
Result: DAZ Studio died at frame 125.
The odd thing is that nothing even happens at frame 125 (i.e. it is not a key frame for either the camera or Genesis figure).
I'm wondering if it could be related to shadow calculations? Initially the camera walks down a hallway and a closed door. The failure, in both cases, occurred same frames after the door to the office opened and the camera started to step into the office. Unlike the hallway, the office has 3 light sources. I am guessing that when the light sources are not visible (because of the closed door) they are not calculated. when the door opens and the camera can see more of the room, these three lights come into play and maybe cause the crash?
It seems that lighting may not be the issue. I turned off all my lights and rendering still cause DAZ to crash.
Can you start from and continue on from that frame?
I am wondering if a memory issue?
I myself rarely render in 3Delight so pretty clueless.
In fact until I got Octane render rarely used DAZ studio at all, I did have both Carrara Poser stop rendering on an external after a certain number of frames due to memory until I altered that drive's settings.
I was hoping that was the case...it would be painful to do a render but eventually it would get done.
However, it does not seem so. When I restarted at the next frame after the last one rendered (i.e. the problem frame) it crashes even if I just started DAZ.
I'm removing things from my scene just to see if I can find the object that is causing the problem...so far no luck.
Update: Don't know why but it seems that it is the hair that I am using. When I remove the hair and keep everything else I am able to render the frames between 120 and 130. I will try to render the whole range and see if I have any other problems. As to why the hair does not work and waits for a specific frame to crash...I don't know. All I know is that when I remove it, it seems to work.
Before DAZ, I used Anim8or. It has been around for a long time and is nowhere as fancy as the current programs but it has a full 3D modeling, Boning, Sequencing and Scene functionality and all in under 2.5MB (yes...2.5MB, not 25MB or 2.5GB). Best of all the entire thing (obviously excluding model content) is one file which does not need any install, so you can drop it on a USB stick and run it on almost any machine.
In may ways I prefer it to DAZ. I find, for example, their animation key frames much easier to follow and see exactly what is going on. I still use it to create my custom 3D models (as opposed to using DAZ Hexagon) but the reason why I switched to DAZ Studio was the realistic looking (free) models, the ability to morph them, the anim block concept for animating them and the conforming clothing.
I can get a Genesis figure into Anim8or without much problems but I have not yet managed to do so with the texture maps intact (i.e. I get the figure with no texture mapping applied). With some work, I think I might find a way to retain the texture map and maybe even re-bone the figure so that it could animated in Anim8or but I wouldn't stand a chance to implement the conforming clothing in Anim8or...which is why I started using DAZ Studio.
I don't suppose you remember what you changed on the drive settings?
I have been playing with my scene, removing different objects and rendering small sections to see if it renders or not. I am still checking but it seems that hair seems to be the problem. When I removed it, at least the smaller range of frames that I tested (around the problem area) seemed to have rendered. So I swapped out the hair for some other hair and it looks like it went back to crashing. I am going to try to render the whole sequence without hair to verify that it does indeed render without hair. However, if that is the case them I am really confused. Even if the one set of hair was somehow corrupt, it is unlikely that two completely different hair would cause the same error.
I am also going to try to render on a different computer to see if it is related to my workstation or has the same problem on all workstations.
It was just a FAT drive with a 4GB file limit, I reformatted it to the other kind (sorry not a geek)
No problem. I understand the problem you had (being a computer geek) and, unfortunately, I don't have the same issue. Thanks anyway.