Hold on missing frames?

[andy_lewis]

Hello,

I like to render my frames in Deadline at 'Half Raster Refine', which allows me to render out frames in a sequence in a 'stagger-then-fill' way. For example, if I render out a frame range of 1-100, Half Raster Refine will render out frame (1,10, 20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100) then (5,15,25,35,45,55,65,75,85,95) then (3,8,13, etc. ). This allows me to get a glimpse of an entire render sequence early, without having to render the entire thing first. Good for quality control.

The problem is, when I want to check completed frames while the sequence is still rendering, I have a ton of gaps in between frames, and Chaos Player likes to smash the frames together and render them back-to-back, rather than holding on missing frames. This results in super-fast playback and is unhelpful.

Is it possible to hold on missing frames, so that I can preview an animation that has gaps in between completed frames, without having the frames all accordion together? Does that make sense? Let me know. Thank you!

Cheers,
Andy

[yolov]

Hi there,

It does make sense. One question, though:
If the missing frames were to be held out - it would mean playing through empty (black) frames if you were to play through a sequence like that. Is that the expected behavior?

[andy_lewis]

The ideal behavior would be to hold on the last available frame instead of showing a black frame. I believe this is what Nuke and Fusion can do.

[smbell]

The ideal behavior would be to hold on the last available frame instead of showing a black frame. I believe this is what Nuke and Fusion can do.

It's an option in Nuke and would be nice to have as an option here as well. Having a black frame instead of a hold is good for finding bad or missing frames in a sequence.

[yolov]

I'll put a note to add an option to define the behavior for missing frames.
Let me know if just displaying 'black' for missing is enough, or you'll need to 'hold' the last frame until reaching the next actual frame?

[andy_lewis]

I would definitely prefer to have the option to either have a black frame or hold the last available frame. The latter option is much more important to me than the former.

[SnipeyX]

+1! Love this idea, commenting for agreement. I can definitely see myself switching between both behaviours: sometimes I'll want to hold on the last frame so i can 'seamlessly' preview the animation, and other times I'd want to know that frames are missing for some reason with the black frames. Great suggestion!