BG Renderer MAX
  • Hello. 
    Thank you for the great product! 
    There is one question:
    • BG Renderer MAX creates files named like  xxx_00000.dpx  no matter how you set the name in the project. 
      I mean - [name] [underscore] [counter].file extension
      Is it possible to change the settings for file name to xxx.00000.dpx  - 
    • [name] [dot] [counter].file extension ?
  • Lex Luger said:
    Hello. 
    Thank you for the great product! 
    There is one question:
    • BG Renderer MAX creates files named like  xxx_00000.dpx  no matter how you set the name in the project. 
      I mean - [name] [underscore] [counter].file extension
      Is it possible to change the settings for file name to xxx.00000.dpx  - 
    • [name] [dot] [counter].file extension ?
    Hi Lex,
    We do so for a reason – not to break to following interaction with FFMPEG. Do you need such naming to follow your studio guidelines?

    Nik
  • Nik Ska said:
     Do you need such naming to follow your studio guidelines?

    Nik
    Yes. We had situations when some software do not understand the naming correctly with [underscore].
  • Lex Luger said:
    Nik Ska said:
     Do you need such naming to follow your studio guidelines?

    Nik
    Yes. We had situations when some software do not understand the naming correctly with [underscore].
    Could you please specify, which software was that? We are rolling in new naming rules for the next update, but I can't promise your request is going to be included in it.
  • Could you please specify, which software was that? We are rolling in new naming rules for the next update, but I can't promise your request is going to be included in it.
    I won’t say exactly, but it seems to be Maya and some color grading software. If I am not mistaken. 
    When we created the inner pipeline we had to consider this.

  • Lex Luger said:
    Could you please specify, which software was that? We are rolling in new naming rules for the next update, but I can't promise your request is going to be included in it.
    I won’t say exactly, but it seems to be Maya and some color grading software. If I am not mistaken. 
    When we created the inner pipeline we had to consider this.

    Ok, noted. We'll run more tests and try to make it possible for more separators
  • Hi,
    sorry, but your Software does not what it should do. It's quite buggy. 
    Sometimes AE crashes when we use 40 threads (AMD CPU has 64 Cores).
    Or: it says job is finishes, but there are still a lot of tasks in the BG and a lot of tasks to do in the BG.
    Thank you and best regards
    Reinhard
  • Hi,
    sorry, but your Software does not what it should do. It's quite buggy. 
    Sometimes AE crashes when we use 40 threads (AMD CPU has 64 Cores).
    Or: it says job is finishes, but there are still a lot of tasks in the BG and a lot of tasks to do in the BG.
    Thank you and best regards
    Reinhard
    Hi Reinhard,
    Thank you for a feedback.
    When working in Multithreaded environment, please consider not the amount of threads, but the amount of resources your machine will take to render the scene.
    Each thread from BGRenderer works by rendering through AE pipeline internally.
    If your machine can handle 40 simultaneous versions of After Effects open - than BgRenderer should work to.
    Please also calculate the amount of allocated memory per process. It's not uncommon for AfterEffects render to allocate 2-3GB of memory during a render, so you should look for 128 GB of RAM on your machine at least.
    Another thing is Input/Output performance of your drive. When working with 40 Threads, you should allow 40 processes to simultaneously read from same file without raising an error. It's not very common characteristic of even top-end SSDs :(
    To summarize, to being able to render with 40 Threads successfully, is not the same as having 40 cores on your machine, we are working of workarounds like to rerender broken parts and recovering process, but it's not ready yet.

    My suggestion is to lower this amount drastically to like 12, I would assume it will speed up all of the things a lot since there will be much less competing resources on your machine.

    Thank you again,
    Mike
  • Hi,
    sorry, but your Software does not what it should do. It's quite buggy. 
    Sometimes AE crashes when we use 40 threads (AMD CPU has 64 Cores).
    Or: it says job is finishes, but there are still a lot of tasks in the BG and a lot of tasks to do in the BG.
    Thank you and best regards
    Reinhard
    Hi Reinhard,
    Thank you for a feedback.
    When working in Multithreaded environment, please consider not the amount of threads, but the amount of resources your machine will take to render the scene.
    Each thread from BGRenderer works by rendering through AE pipeline internally.
    If your machine can handle 40 simultaneous versions of After Effects open - than BgRenderer should work to.
    Please also calculate the amount of allocated memory per process. It's not uncommon for AfterEffects render to allocate 2-3GB of memory during a render, so you should look for 128 GB of RAM on your machine at least.
    Another thing is Input/Output performance of your drive. When working with 40 Threads, you should allow 40 processes to simultaneously read from same file without raising an error. It's not very common characteristic of even top-end SSDs :(
    To summarize, to being able to render with 40 Threads successfully, is not the same as having 40 cores on your machine, we are working of workarounds like to rerender broken parts and recovering process, but it's not ready yet.

    My suggestion is to lower this amount drastically to like 12, I would assume it will speed up all of the things a lot since there will be much less competing resources on your machine.

    Thank you again,
    Mike
    Thank you.

    tried it now on our MacPro. But here we got another Problem:
    Error Massage:
    Can't import templates, please check your write permissions"

    Start the render queue that BG Render Max creates direkt from AE does not bring any performance advantage to normal rendering out of AE.
    Thank you and best regards
    Reinhard
  • Ugh, We finished one project using this plugin ... NOW for some strange reason BGRenderMax won't launch in either 2020 or 2019. All other installed extension ui windows pop up... 

    When I select BGRenderMax under extensions nothing happens. 
    Restart
    Uninstall
    Reinstall
    Change monitor resolution
    Change UI layouts in AE
    Still nothing.... 

    I've experienced stuff like this in some 3d programs where a menu get thrown off screen? Any idea?


    Praise baby Jesus. ZXP installer turned off BGRM and turn back on. FIXED


  • Hi, after finishing tiff export, converting to mp4 failes completely, or randomly is missing frame, or converts half of the frames and freezes frame in the middle of the video till the end. Any solution for this? 

    Windows 10, AE 2019, 64g Ram, i9 9900k, using 6 cores of 9 for rendering
  • Hey,

    Have some issues with the extension. 
    So, i've set it for a PNG sequence with 8 Threads (out of 16), i have 64 GB of ram, and each time i'm pressing Render, it renders just 4-8 frames then it says (DONE).

    The thing is, my comp has 600 frames, and while BG Renderer says done, it is still running in the background with just 1 thread. 
    If i try to render again, it will add another thread.


    It is really frustrating.
  • Hi.
    Reinstalled the system and a new error appeared:
    "ERROR: no such file or directory, lstat
    "C:\User\User\AppData\Roaming\BGRendererMax\bgrenderer.aep"
    [img]https://i.imgur.com/Y6ADikb.jpg[/img]

    Windows 10 LTSC, AE 2020 (v.17)
  • Hi there. I decided to buy this as a move from RenderGarden because of your lovely interface. this said, now I've purchased I've discovered that BG renderer max doesn't allow you to overwrite image sequences. this is pretty integral to my workflow. Are there any plans to implement this as an optional setting?
  • Hey, Version 1.0.9 starts Rendering a Render Queue and then stops in middle of the first Queue. With and without Multip.
    Anyone else has Probs. with 1.0.9?
  • oli monn said:
    Hey, Version 1.0.9 starts Rendering a Render Queue and then stops in middle of the first Queue. With and without Multip.
    Anyone else has Probs. with 1.0.9?
    I updated today and it just sits there on queued with no way to start the encode. Effectively they made the plugin useless.
  • Hi there. I decided to buy this as a move from RenderGarden because of your lovely interface. this said, now I've purchased I've discovered that BG renderer max doesn't allow you to overwrite image sequences. this is pretty integral to my workflow. Are there any plans to implement this as an optional setting?
    Hi Ben,

    That is true, at the moment BGR doesn't allow to rewrite image sequences, but we are going to implement this in the future updates. Could you please describe your workflow a bit more?

    Nik
  • oli monn said:
    Hey, Version 1.0.9 starts Rendering a Render Queue and then stops in middle of the first Queue. With and without Multip.
    Anyone else has Probs. with 1.0.9?

    oli monn said:
    Hey, Version 1.0.9 starts Rendering a Render Queue and then stops in middle of the first Queue. With and without Multip.
    Anyone else has Probs. with 1.0.9?
    I updated today and it just sits there on queued with no way to start the encode. Effectively they made the plugin useless.
    This is a pretty weird issue. Please reset the BGR state as described here: https://bgrenderer.com/troubleshooting
    If that doesn't help, open a support ticket along with the log (here's how to make one)

    Nik
  • Lex Luger said:
    Hi.
    Reinstalled the system and a new error appeared:
    "ERROR: no such file or directory, lstat
    "C:\User\User\AppData\Roaming\BGRendererMax\bgrenderer.aep"
    [img]https://i.imgur.com/Y6ADikb.jpg[/img]

    Windows 10 LTSC, AE 2020 (v.17)
    Hi Lex,
    1. Please update the the version 1.0.9 and check whether the issue persists
    2. Are working on a personal, or a company-owned machine?

    Nik
  • Hi, after finishing tiff export, converting to mp4 failes completely, or randomly is missing frame, or converts half of the frames and freezes frame in the middle of the video till the end. Any solution for this? 

    Windows 10, AE 2019, 64g Ram, i9 9900k, using 6 cores of 9 for rendering
    Hi Lukas,

    Is this behavior consistent among your compositions?
    Could you please send us the logs (https://bgrenderer.com/troubleshooting#logs)?

    Nik
  • The issue still persists on the latest version as well. As soon as i press BG Render, it says done, but only 1 thread is running in the background.
  • While the background render functionality is nice, multiprocessing is still way too buggy for production release. especially on Windows. From movies not compiling correctly to borking in the middle of rendering image sequences to incorrectly displaying progress in the UI, this feature is essentially useless at this stage in development. Running 12 cores out of 20 on a simple comp, i7-6950 3.0ghz, 64gb RAM, SSD, 1080Ti card
  • The issue still persists on the latest version as well. As soon as i press BG Render, it says done, but only 1 thread is running in the background.
    Hi Alexandru,
    Please open a support ticket and send us the logs.

    Nik
  • While the background render functionality is nice, multiprocessing is still way too buggy for production release. especially on Windows. From movies not compiling correctly to borking in the middle of rendering image sequences to incorrectly displaying progress in the UI, this feature is essentially useless at this stage in development. Running 12 cores out of 20 on a simple comp, i7-6950 3.0ghz, 64gb RAM, SSD, 1080Ti card
    Hi Ryan,

    Based on our experience, the limiting factor for the After Effects rendering performance is not the core count, but RAM speed and amount. 
    4-6 threads should be optimal on most i7 machines, and the performance improvements above that are not as significant. 
    Please note that issues may arise for the synced folders, like Dropbox, Google Drive etc due to the way they handle file sync.

    That said, we are working on a completely updated render engine that will handle more threads better by splitting the whole job to chunks. At the time, BGR uses "Skip Existing Frames" for each thread and for high thread count that itself might be the issue. 

    For now, I'd recommend lowering thread count from 12 to 6 and watch the performance. Also, please send us the logs of the latest troubled render in a support ticket.

    Nik
  • Nik Ska said:
    Hi there. I decided to buy this as a move from RenderGarden because of your lovely interface. this said, now I've purchased I've discovered that BG renderer max doesn't allow you to overwrite image sequences. this is pretty integral to my workflow. Are there any plans to implement this as an optional setting?
    Hi Ben,

    That is true, at the moment BGR doesn't allow to rewrite image sequences, but we are going to implement this in the future updates. Could you please describe your workflow a bit more?

    Nik
    Sure: in order for quick iteration on client feedback, i usually export my entire AFX timeline to an image sequence, which is then used in a dedicated export comp containing the sound from the main timeline. This way, if its a heavy project but the client just needs amends to a small portion, i can amend that part of the main timeline, adjust my work area and simply overwrite that part of my image sequence using RenderGarden.
  • also, great to hear you'll be implementing that! other than that, it seems to be the perfect multiprocessing solution. much cleaner interface than the competition!
  • any chance of a toggle to replace existing clips rather than automatically incrementing with a _1

    - a " I know its silly but just overwrite any existing files without notification" button
  • Is there anyway to start another BG render after you have already started one and its still rendering? Its unfortunate that it can not. The reason I loved BG Renderer 2 is because it would allow me to render when ever I wanted to and I could launch another render via terminal window. Essentially as many as i wanted. This really should be an option for BG Renderer Max. Or at least give access back to the older version that used terminal.

    For Example:
    I open one project up and set up BG Renderer Max to render a video. Then I close that project and open a new project that i need to render a video. But I cant because BG Renderer Max is still rendering.

    What would be nice if BG Renderer Max had a Queue that you could add to or at least allow multiple renders at once.
  • What does the experimental render engine you just added do? How is it different? Great script, I'm loving it :D 
    Thanks!
  • I'am waiting on the same question Gerald Mark Soto asked.
    That is why I'am using bg render. Example; rendering a composition as a PNG SEQ with skip existing frames and then launch like 8 bg renders.
    Is this still possible? 
  • also, great to hear you'll be implementing that! other than that, it seems to be the perfect multiprocessing solution. much cleaner interface than the competition!
    Thanks Ben,

    We are now finishing the work on the new engine, and I hope we ship this feature soon.

    Nik
  • any chance of a toggle to replace existing clips rather than automatically incrementing with a _1

    - a " I know its silly but just overwrite any existing files without notification" button
    Hi Ron,

    We haven't really anticipated this feature, but BGR 1.1.x branch will have a new UI and we will put this option there.

    Nik
  • Is there anyway to start another BG render after you have already started one and its still rendering? Its unfortunate that it can not. The reason I loved BG Renderer 2 is because it would allow me to render when ever I wanted to and I could launch another render via terminal window. Essentially as many as i wanted. This really should be an option for BG Renderer Max. Or at least give access back to the older version that used terminal.

    For Example:
    I open one project up and set up BG Renderer Max to render a video. Then I close that project and open a new project that i need to render a video. But I cant because BG Renderer Max is still rendering.

    What would be nice if BG Renderer Max had a Queue that you could add to or at least allow multiple renders at once.
    Hi Gerald,

    We are now finishing the work on our new engine, and it is possible with the new one. You would be able to add jobs to the render and then close After Effects to save some rendering resources. We will notify everyone when this is available.

    Nik
  • What does the experimental render engine you just added do? How is it different? Great script, I'm loving it :D 
    Thanks!
    Hi Sanketh,

    This is actually a new engine we ship along with the current one for testing purposes. You may give it a go by following these instructions. https://bgrenderer.com/newengine

    Nik
  • I'am waiting on the same question Gerald Mark Soto asked.
    That is why I'am using bg render. Example; rendering a composition as a PNG SEQ with skip existing frames and then launch like 8 bg renders.
    Is this still possible? 
    Hi Armand,

    We are working to roll out this update soon. The new engine is now mostly functional and works more stable than the old one. As soon as we unlock the job adding feature, we notify everyone. You may send us a private message to get enrolled to our testers program.

    Nik
  • Hi, quick question

    ive installed this onto a fresh machine running windows 10 pro and the latest  cc2020 and it installed fine.
    I set off a big render across 6 threads (my machine had 12) whats weird is the plugin interface keeps telling me its finished yet 
    the project is still rendering in the background?

    is this a bug?.....is the plugin just telling me its finished sending the files and you just have to wait for it to finish or is the software incorrectly telling me its finished?

    the renders are looking fine and the compiled file is working but you have no idea when it will finish?
  • Hi, love this script and I use it all the time. 
    I've noticed you've made changes to the render presets over time. Currently the .h264 preset is extremely low quality, practically unusable. Would it be possible to add back in the "h.264-slowest" preset like there was several months ago? Or is it possible to activate that preset in the command line? That one was just about perfect for the majority of my projects. Thanks
  • Hi, love this script and I use it all the time. 
    I've noticed you've made changes to the render presets over time. Currently the .h264 preset is extremely low quality, practically unusable. Would it be possible to add back in the "h.264-slowest" preset like there was several months ago? Or is it possible to activate that preset in the command line? That one was just about perfect for the majority of my projects. Thanks
    Hi Michael,

    You are right, we were using this h264 preset internally as a proxy render, but with the next release (1.0.11) we are adding 2 proper h264 presets with VRB and different framerates. Tested on 4K and 1080p, results are crisp. Just a couple things left to add to the mix.

    Thank you,
    Nik
  • Hello - 
    is this capable of rendering out the HAP codec? (And mp4? (crazy AE can't do these directly) 
    (HAP is used a lot for live video / projection mapping / concert video software)  See : 

    https://aescripts.com/aftercodecs now includes HAP - and I'm trying to decide which one to buy.... 

    thanks from Australia
  • Just purchased today.  I would really really like to have the HAP codec supported as well.  It's the industry standard for live shows.
  • Hm, tried out the script - and it was the first time something crashed my new mac pro to the point where it rebooted by itself after freezing entirely after launching processes for 5 minutes or so. Nice script ;)
  • AMAZING !!!
    Nik Ska said:
    Is there anyway to start another BG render after you have already started one and its still rendering? Its unfortunate that it can not. The reason I loved BG Renderer 2 is because it would allow me to render when ever I wanted to and I could launch another render via terminal window. Essentially as many as i wanted. This really should be an option for BG Renderer Max. Or at least give access back to the older version that used terminal.

    For Example:
    I open one project up and set up BG Renderer Max to render a video. Then I close that project and open a new project that i need to render a video. But I cant because BG Renderer Max is still rendering.

    What would be nice if BG Renderer Max had a Queue that you could add to or at least allow multiple renders at once.
    Hi Gerald,

    We are now finishing the work on our new engine, and it is possible with the new one. You would be able to add jobs to the render and then close After Effects to save some rendering resources. We will notify everyone when this is available.

    Nik

  • We just finished 2 large productions using BGrenderer Max and it didn't go smooth. Project #1 was 8k Project #2 was 1080. 

    Our workstations are 2 x xeon 14 & 22 core with 256gb or ram. (sad thing about this we benched today an i9 is faster for AE)

    We sure miss the old BG render and wish After Effects rendered like it did in 2014. (we could launch Old BG and add more instances while monitoring resources on our own)

    Finally giving into the animation team telling me to integrate deadline for managing resources and renders. I'll keep an eye out for new updates but sometimes if you really love something you need to let it go...right, something like that.
  • Hi!

    I'm running into the same situation where the underscore is causing an issue with importing with the editing bay in a post facility. Is it possible to honor what we have set in After Effects, or at least not add an underscore to the filename? Thank you for your time.

    Nik Ska said:
    Lex Luger said:
    Hello. 
    Thank you for the great product! 
    There is one question:
    • BG Renderer MAX creates files named like  xxx_00000.dpx  no matter how you set the name in the project. 
      I mean - [name] [underscore] [counter].file extension
      Is it possible to change the settings for file name to xxx.00000.dpx  - 
    • [name] [dot] [counter].file extension ?
    Hi Lex,
    We do so for a reason – not to break to following interaction with FFMPEG. Do you need such naming to follow your studio guidelines?

    Nik

  • Please add options to set the bit rate for the h264 preset as the current bit rate is very low and generates artifacts in the video file. Great plugin by the way. Definitely speeds up my renders and I love seeing my cpu rendering @ 100% usage. Can you make this plugin for premiere or media encoder as they also render slow
  • Please add options to set the bit rate for the h264 preset as the current bit rate is very low and generates artifacts in the video file. Great plugin by the way. Definitely speeds up my renders and I love seeing my cpu rendering @ 100% usage. Can you make this plugin for premiere or media encoder as they also render slow
    Hi Vivian,

    We are releasing 1.0.11 soon and there are 2 H.264 presets with different bitrates.

    Thank you,
    Nik
  • Mat Hale said:
    We just finished 2 large productions using BGrenderer Max and it didn't go smooth. Project #1 was 8k Project #2 was 1080. 

    Our workstations are 2 x xeon 14 & 22 core with 256gb or ram. (sad thing about this we benched today an i9 is faster for AE)

    We sure miss the old BG render and wish After Effects rendered like it did in 2014. (we could launch Old BG and add more instances while monitoring resources on our own)

    Finally giving into the animation team telling me to integrate deadline for managing resources and renders. I'll keep an eye out for new updates but sometimes if you really love something you need to let it go...right, something like that.
    Hi Mat,

    We are releasing the new version on February 10th, please give it a go. It has a completely reworked engine and more features.
    I would also like to hear about the issues you faced with the new BGR, if possible, contact me via a support ticket.

    Thank you,
    Nik
  • Just purchased today.  I would really really like to have the HAP codec supported as well.  It's the industry standard for live shows.

    Hello - 
    is this capable of rendering out the HAP codec? (And mp4? (crazy AE can't do these directly) 
    (HAP is used a lot for live video / projection mapping / concert video software)  See : 

    https://aescripts.com/aftercodecs now includes HAP - and I'm trying to decide which one to buy.... 

    thanks from Australia
    Hi guys,

    We are working on AfterCodecs integration, so we could do both multithreaded sequences and HAP together soon. Not the 1.0.11 release though.

    Thank you,
    Nik
  • there is so much potential. 
    Keep up the good work.

    there are a couple of things that need to be adjusted for professional work though.

    Is there a reason, why the exported QT 422 File is in Rec 709 colorspace?
    All settings in project and export are in sRGB.
  • there is so much potential. 
    Keep up the good work.

    there are a couple of things that need to be adjusted for professional work though.

    Is there a reason, why the exported QT 422 File is in Rec 709 colorspace?
    All settings in project and export are in sRGB.
    Hi Pawel,

    That is a great question actually, and I've found this issue only now while updating our render presets. 
    In short, 1.0.12 will have massively updated presets system with optional After Codecs integration so you would have much more control over the output.

    Nik