Render management

There is a significant issue in FCP4 with its render management. Because you can now have mixed render settings within a sequence, there is no simple way to force a full quality render of all your material. If you set your render settings to low quality during some render intensive portion of your work, and render that material, you keep that render. If you then set render controls back to high quality, the low res renders are maintained.

This sounds like a good thing, but what happens three weeks later when you need to output to tape or export your material? You have to now go back through all your material and find what was rendered at low res and adjust it to force a re-render. If you miss a clip it plays back in low quality. There doesn't seem to be any way to force the full res re-render either when recording to tape, when printing to video, when editing to tape or even when exporting, even recompress every frame seems to recompress using the low res rendering.

Has anybody found a good way around this problem. To me this is a must fix issue that severely cripples this application in a professional video environment.

All the best,

Tom

Tom,

read my post in the other forum....

[www.lafcpug.org]

Is this what you are eluding to? I'm kinda confused by your post....

or do you mean that when you switch your rendering to Use Playback Quality and that is set to Unlimited RT Low - when you render in this situation, it renders in low res /draft mode. and then when you switch back to Full Quality, the low res render does not become unrendered and it stays rendered in low rez...? If you adjust something simple like the opacity line, it will become unrendered and you can switch your setting back to FULL Quality and render it again - this time should be in full res.

I personally don't use med/low res render anymore, i get by with the RT and I always render in the Full Quality. But if what I described is what you're saying, then yes, it is an issue.

I think this requires an iChat AV conference!

-CHL

Hi,

No. I don't mean the high medium low setting in RT. That only effects playback quality. I'm talking about the Render Control panel in Sequence Settings. There you can adjust the frame rate and resolution for rendered material. That's what I can't find any way to override once you've rendered your material in low res. Even if you switch in Render Control to full quality, the low res renders are maintained.

All the best,

Tom

Just to add:

"do you mean that when you switch your rendering to Use Playback Quality and that is set to Unlimited RT Low - when you render in this situation, it renders in low res /draft mode."

This isn'tt correct. When you are in RT Low render quality will still be in high res, only playback quality and how much RT you get is affected by this control. Render is still at high res unless you change it in the Render Control panel.

All the best,

Tom

Tom, you're absolutely right, I've come across this problem myself. There isn't a way to sift out renders which have been done at "sub 100% frame rate| and/or "sub 100% resolution". Might be quite good if they had a separate entry in the Render Manager then they could be isolated for deletion.

Guys, have you checked the new System Settings (Shift-Q) panel for Playback Control? I think this is what you're after.

I confess i don't often render at less than full quality so I may have missed an authentic bug, but my PTV's seem fine and there *is* a choice between RECORD- "Full Quality/Use Playback Settings." if you select the second of course it'll dutifully play out at whatever resolution your clips are rendered.

- Loren
Today's FCP4 keytip:
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Can I jump in?
FCP4:
I've been working in a sequence that has lots of effects and filters. I had the sequence settings>render control set to the lowest possible selections while composing. (Looks like crap. I actually expected better and I expected faster rendering but that's not the point, sorry.)
Now that I'm golden on this sequence, I need to rendering to allbump up to best DV quality and at proper frame rate.
When I open the Sequences Settings and change the Render Controls to all the highest and best, nothing happens. I expected to see all of the render bars turn red but nothing happens.
Do I need to use that newfangled Render Manager? I would, but it's a scary piece of software. Do I have to use the Media Manager?

If I may harken back to Good Olde Days, even Media 100 could figure out instantly that the render files attached to a project have become obsolete.

bogiesan, boise ID
(Where we had a Mac User Group meeting the other night that didn't much compare with your recent LAFCPUG meeting!)

Not exactly a bug, bs.

But if you read the thread all the answers are here.

Nick

Yeah, well, I read the whole thread several times.
Even printed them all out.
All I see is a failure in the software to perform as expected.
change the rendering settings in a sequence, the database tracking the renders should update and realize they're all wrong and then kindly display that information where the user can find it. If it's not a bug, what is it? A feature? Just jinkin' ya. Doesn't matter to me much, it's just another failed expectation, another hole in this product that makes me wonder who they designed it for and who tested it. I'm with Tom, it's a super stupid glitch that should have been fixed long ago.

bogiesan

"makes me wonder who they designed it for and who tested it"
Yeah, me too.
Did they have any editors on the test team?
But Ralph will tell you that even if they DID have editors and got excelent feedback from them, the engineers may very well have turned around and decided to ignore them.

OK.
My understandng is that this behaviour is a new feature of FCP4.

On the surface it is actualy a good idea.
Need a render intensive effect in a hurry?
Switch to a lower res render setting, and away you go.
And you DONT lose all your existing Hi-res renders.
Cool.
Hi res and Low res renders can exist on the same timeline at the same time.
Cool.

Whats missing is a very important step, where you (or the app) can automatically detect which renders are lo-res, and jetison them in preparation for a Hi res re-render.
This is something that should be a flick of a switch whilke youre cutting,
and an option built into "Print to Video" stage.

So you know all this already as it's just a re-hash of all the posts above.
But I stuffed up as I was duscussing the exact same issues at the exact same time in a long post over at Cafe LA, and not here, sorry bogiesan.
[www.lafcpug.org]

WORKAROUND
At the moment, if you have used any lo-res renders in a sequnce, then the SAFEST thing you can do, is create a situation where you re-render EVERYTHING in hi res prior to final output.
3 ways to do this:
1. Render manager.
2. Manauly delete render files
3. Select whole sequnce, make invisible, make visible. (or some other thing that will force a re-render, but this is the fastest I can come up with)

Cheers,
Nick

H U G E problem here...

dual g4 533 768m ram, 10.3.6, fcp 4.5

I've found the same things you guys have agreed upon: lowres renders can not be overridden with "full quality" (or even medium or high quality) renders until the lowres renders are thrown away with the render manager. Yes, that's a case of FCP "thinking" too much but being stupid.

I've also found that on my setup, I do not have a "full" or even a "high" quality option in my timeline's "RT" pulldown. Yes, FCP is set up right elsewhere, just as it should be, but the high and full quality options just are not there. As a result, every single thing I do is made at medium quality (at best), and apparently I'm forced to rendermanager-throwaway all my renders just before printing to tape, and hope that a "print to tape" (with correspoding "full quality" setting) will render out the whole project in full quality. Bwahaha. In one fell swoop, this unarguably makes FCP a goddamn toy.

You guys are too kind, so I'll ask it, WHAT @#$%& MORON DESIGNED THIS **** ?

This forum is not for ranting and raving. Its about solving problems. Using inappropriate language tells us more about you than about your problem. And no I dont care if you are on deadline or just frustrated.

mike