Rush - After Effects 6.5 Issues

Rush Render Queue - After Effects 6.5 Issues
(C) Copyright Seriss Corporation. All rights reserved.
(C) Copyright 1995,2000 Greg Ercolano. All rights reserved.
V 102.42a10 02/15/11


	Using Rush with AfterFX 6.5

However, some issues with 6.0 still carry to 6.5..

Windows: Problems with running After Effects on multiple processors under Rush.
Only use one entry per comp in the AE Render Queue
'Use storage overflow' and 'Skip existing frames' should be un-checked in the AE Render Settings
'Use Comp Frame Number' should be checked in the Output Module Settings.
You can leave the 'Output Path' blank in the Rush Submit-AfterFX form.
Make sure your 'Project Settings' has 'Start numbering frames at:' set to zero
Steps for submitting a job in Rush
Getting AfterEffects rendering on two or more procs under Windows
OSX: Window Manager Errors (eg. "INIT_Processeses [sic]")
Error messages and their meanings

Windows: Prevent more than one aerender from running
on Windows machines.

Currently there's a bug in AE (under Windows only) where running more than one AERENDER process per machine under the Rush service either hangs or crashes aerender, causing either or both processes to fail with this 'Application Error' from AfterFX.EXE:

Adobe is trying to fix this in a future release or update. This shows up ONLY on multi-processor /Windows/ machines using After Effects for rendering.

You can work around the problem in either of these ways:

Reconfigure the Rushd service to run on the desktop using these instructions, then you can use all processors.

Limit your After Effects renders to use one processor on each machine (see below)

#1 is probably the most desirable for farm machines, since you can get use of all processors for rendering. However, it does mean those machines need to be left logged in at all times with the 'Rushd' running in a stowed DOS window, instead of as a service.

To prevent Rush from assigning all processors to an AfterFX render, you can use the 'Ram' value in the submit-afterfx 'Advanced Options' to prevent more than one aerender from running on the machines.

To do this, assuming your render farm is configured in Rush to have 2048 of ram on each machine, then submit your job to the farm with the 'Ram' value in the submit form set to 2047.

This will prevent rush from starting more than 1 AERENDER process per host, because Rush will think the AfterFX job needs all of that ram to run each AERENDER process, preventing it from starting another AERENDER on the same box.

You can then submit other kinds of renders (eg. maya) to these machines using a Ram value of 1, and they'll be able to get on because of the 1MB the afterfx job leaves behind (2048-2047=1MB available).

Another way is to change the number of cpus in the rush hosts file to 1 for the dual proc machines, but that will affect non-afterfx renders too (eg. maya), so this is not recommended unless you're using Rush exclusively for afterfx rendering. The more flexible solution is the RAM solution above.

Only use one entry per comp in the AE Render Queue

If you have two or more instances of the same comp in the AE Render Queue, AERENDER will only use the settings from the first one. To prevent confusion, it is advised you only have one instance per comp in the AE Render Queue.
BUG NOTE: Even *un-checked* AE Render Queue items are recognized by the command line version of After Effects, so be sure to clean out your project's render queue before submitting it to Rush. (thanks to Kevin and Mark at The Orphanage)

'Use storage overflow' & 'Skip existing frames'
should be un-checked in the AE Render Settings

These two "Render Settings" should be un-checked if you're rendering specific comp sequences: 'Use storage overflow' and 'Skip existing frames':

If 'Use Storage Overflow' is checked, it can cause confusion if there's a permission problem with the output directory; AE will indicate it rendered OK, but there will be nothing in the output directory because it's failing over to the alternate storage dir.
If 'Skip existing frames' is checked, it will not render frames that already exist on disk, meaning it won't re-render frames. It is only useful to have 'Skip existing frames' checked *if* you submit the job with the 'Comp Name:' field blank, so AE can render only missing frames when running on multiple processors.
(Thanks to Mark at The Orphanage for helping figure this one out)

'Use Comp Frame Number'

You should make sure 'Use Comp Frame Number' is checked in the output module settings, eg:

If you don't, every frame in the rush job will try to write to frames numbered frame.0001.ext.
Since this is an AE6 specific feature, any 5.5 project submitted to the render farm needs to be opened in AE6, have the box checked, and then be re-saved named proj_AE6rndr.aep. Warning: this file will not be backwards compatible with AE5.5, so appending the render suffix is crucial.
(thanks to Kevin and Mark at The Orphanage)

You can leave the 'Output Path' blank in the Rush Submit-AfterFX form.

If you leave it blank, the output directory specified in your AEP scene file will be used, i.e. 'Render Queue | Output Module'
The 'Output Path' field is only needed if you want to override the path you have specified in your AE Render Queue's 'Output Module' for the comp.

Make sure your 'Project Settings' has 'Start numbering frames at:' set to zero

Make sure your AEP file's 'project settings' (File -> Project Settings) has:
Start numbering frames at: 0
If it's set to anything other than '0', AE applies that as an offset to the frame number embedded in the rendered frame's filenames.
So if you're seeing, for instance, a +1 frame offset on all your rendered frames, you probably have this set to '1' instead of '0'.
The common problem reported when this setting is set incorrectly is:

> "It seems that Rush is telling After Effects to render a certain frame > (for instance, frame 9), but AE is actually rendering the next frame (frame 10). > It would appear the renders are all writing out images offset by one."

Steps for submitting a job in Rush

Double-click on the shortcut to bring up the submit-afterfx interface.

Optionally specify a Job Title.

For the Scene Path, navigate to your AE project using the Browse button. If it is your first time submitting, you may have to manually type in //server/volume name in order to get a directory listing. Avoid using a mapped drive letter (z:/yada/yada) to get to your project, to avoid problems with UNC paths, eg. when people log out, and the drive maps disappear.

Leave the 'Output Path' blank, unless you want to override the path specified in your AE Render Queue entry.

Enter the exact 'Comp Name' that is queued to render. If you have more than one comp to render, you can submit separate rush submissions for each one.
Or, you can leave the 'Comp Name' field blank to render everything configured in the AfterFX Render Queue. In which case, be sure to enable the 'Skip existing frames' flag in the Render Settings. For more info on leaving 'Comp Name' blank, click on the '?' for this field in the submit form.

Set your batching to 5 or 10. This will render the comp in 5 frame increments and helps speed up the job by limiting the number of times AE has to start up.

For "Cpus", enter the list of machines you intend to render on. Click on the "?" next to that field for a description of what can be entered here.
To find out which hostgroups are available on your network, (+any=10, +farm=10, etc.), go into Irush, and in the menubar, click on Network | All Hostgroups.

(Thanks to Kevin at The Orphanage for helping write this list)

Getting Both Procs Rendering With AE.

This workaround is necessary to work around a bug in After Effects where it can't run more than one instance of itself from a service without hanging.

To get AE rendering on all processors under Rush on your farm without having AE crash or hang, you can reconfigure the Rushd service to run from a DOS window instead of as a Service, and AE will render on all processors correctly.

To do this:

Disable the Rushd service from coming up automatically.
Go into the control panel 'Services', and change the Rushd service from 'Automatic' to 'Manual', and 'Stop' the service.
Configure 'farm' machines to automatically login as the rush user.
If you're using Win7 or Vista, you can use the control panel to do this, eg:
- Open a DOS window and run: control userpasswords2
- Select the user account in the table and uncheck 'Users must enter a username and password..'.
- Click Apply, and an "Automatically Log On" dialog appears.
- Enter the password, hit OK.
- Confirm it works by rebooting.
If you're using Windows XP or older, you can use 'TweakUI' (a Microsoft tool) that allows you to configure the machine to automatically boot/login as the user you had the Rushd service configured to run as.
You can download and install TweakUI from:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Once installed, login as the user you had the Rushd service configured to run as, go into Control Panel | TweakUI, and click the 'Logon' tab, and enable it to automatically login as the user you had the Rushd service configured to run as.
Use a StartUp script to automatically start Rushd in a DOS window
You can use this script to automatically start Rushd when the machine automatically logs in.
One way to do this: Under Windows 2000, go into:
..and click on the user you configured the Rushd service to run as, then click on "Profile", and set the "Logon Script" to the path to the above 'startup.bat' script.
That's it. Reboot to test.

Just leave the window manager logged in as the Rush user, and renders will run normally. You will be able to render AE on all processors through rush without AE crashing.

NOTES:

When rendering afterfx jobs, the AE interface will pop open during rendering. This is "normal".
If you logout the desktop, the rushd will stop running. This is because you've now configured rushd to only run when someone is logged in to a desktop.
It is advised if you plan to log out a farm machine to do 'rush -getoff' before logging out, so that renders are requeued cleanly, and
Rush will act completely normally for all rendering (Maya, Shake, etc) when set up this way. In those cases, no GUIs will appear on the screen, because Maya/Shake/etc are true command line applications.

OSX: Getting the INIT_Processeses [sic] error message.

aerender will fail on an OSX machine if the 'aerender' process is running as a user that is not the same as the user logged in on that machine's window manager. The error message is usually:

INIT_Processeses(), could not establish the default connection 
to the WindowServer. Abort

This can be demonstrated with 'telnet' or 'rsh' by logging in as a non-root user that is different than the user logged into the window manager, and then trying to invoke 'aerender' to render a comp; you get the same error.

The problem is After Effects command line rendering still tries to open its GUI on the window manager, and if the permissions don't match, AE fails with an error.

The only known solutions:

Make 'aerender' run as root.
Root will have access to the window manager, no matter who is logged in. This can be done in various ways, including simply making 'aerender' setuid root:
Note: doing this will cause the rendered images to be owned by root.
Modify the render script to use 'sudo' to run the aerender command as root. Note: doing this will cause the rendered images to be owned by root.
Make a script that determines who is logged in, then force the the aerender command to run as that user using sudo, or similar. Note: doing this will cause the rendered images to be owned by the random users that were logged in at the time.

Another possible way to attack this would be to figure out how to override OSX's window manager authorization system. The behavior you're looking for would be similar to the X windows command 'xhost +', but for OSX's window manager. So far, there is no known way to do that in OSX.

After Effects Errors (and their meanings)

After Effects has some really unusual error messages that has many scratching their heads. Here's a small table of error messages we've seen:

After Effects Error Translations
AE Error Message	Translates to..
aerender Error: After Effects error: invalid file location specification (must include name).	This probably means you improperly specified the "Output Pathname", eg. specifying "/some/path/dir" instead of "/some/path/dir/foo.[####].tga"
PROGRESS: Adding specified comp to Render Queue Error: After Effects error: Error in output for render queue item 4, output module 1. Folder for specified output /some/path/foo does not exist or is not a folder.	This means you specified a bad pathname to write your images in After Effect's render queue settings for the "Output" module.
aerender[455] CFLog (0): CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c), port = 0x1f03, name = 'Processes-0.5242881' See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes. aerender[455] CFLog (99): CFMessagePortCreateLocal(): failed to name Mach port (Processes-0.5242881) CFMessagePortCreateLocal failed (name = Processes-0.5242881 error = 0)	Mac OSX specific: aerender was unable to access the window manager. Be sure you make aerender setuid root.
INIT_Processeses(), could not establish the default connection to the WindowServer.PROGRESS: Launching After Effects...	Same as above.
Error: After Effects error: Unable to call "open" because of parameter 1. Path is not valid. Path: /some/path/[..]/foo.aep	This means 'file not found', as in the scene file you specified could not be found. Could mean either you specified the wrong filename, or the file server volume wasn't mounted on the machine that tried to render the frame.
aerender Error: After Effects error: invalid file location specification (must include name).	Same as above.
PROGRESS: Launching After Effects... aerender ERROR -1712: AESend failed to send apple event at line 674	Not sure. Seen on a Mac OSX machine, probably means aerender is not setuid root.
Can't spawn "aerender -project "/some/path.." -comp ".." -s 1 -e 5 ": No error at //your/server/rushscripts/submit-afterfx.pl line 117.	This means the machine that tried to render this frame either doesn't have After Effects installed on it, or the submit script doesn't have the correct PATH settings telling it where to find the 'aerender' executable.
After Effects error: finding preferences folder <97> no such volume (-35). aerender ERROR -600: GetProcessForPID failed at line 847	Not sure. Probably resolved by making aerender setuid root on Mac OSX.
ERROR: No comp was found with the given name.	That's pretty clear; probably a typo in the "Comp Name" you specified when you submitted the job.
aerender ERROR 1: unable to find after effects application at /usr/bin/Adobe After Effects 6.5 RE.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe After Effects 6.5 -noui at line 773	I think this means the software was installed, then someone renamed the After Effects directory to a new location. You can't rename the install directory after AE is installed, rename it back, or re-install.
After Effects error: plug-in "c:\[..]\Plug-ins\BlueFish444\Bluefish444IO.aex" could not be loaded (126). After Effects can't continue: Unable to execute script at line 550. Uncaught exception	You're probably running two instances of AE on a dual proc Windows box, which is known to cause problems if "Rushd" is configured as a service. Use one of these techniques to work around.
After Effects error: creating ADM floater After Effects can't continue: Unable to execute script at line 550. Uncaught exception	Same as above.
After Effects error: crash occurred while invoking plug-in "Brush Tips Palette". After Effects can't continue: sorry, After Effects has crashed.	Same as above.
CFMessagePortCreateLocal failed (name = Processes-0.15466497 error = 0)	Same as above.