Please help me quit Smoke!

[arichards]

I've come upon this problem quite a few times and something really needs to be done to allow one to intervene on a render for files that render say once every two minutes and up. I am currently rendering a sequence that I have had to import into a new project and flush the renders due to the last project taking around 1.5 hours to load (no exageration). So I set the sequence re-rendering in the new project but there is simply no way to stop the render to see how it is going. I keep pressing the 'Stop Render' button but there is simply no way to actually stop it. On top of this (and this not for the first time either) the progress indicator/feedback is stuck on the first slice and so is not really giving any indication of time remaining. 

For a piece of software that is supposed to be strong on housekeeping, I have to say I have never been so frustrated with any other piece of software I have ever used, seriously. No end of times I find myself waiting for projects to load, being unable to stop a render (until I then have to force quit and then lose those hours of renders). Surely there has to be a better way for AD have Smoke behave as you never have anything remotely like this in any other software. I've never had project takes more than a few seconds to load or be able to stop a render and quit the software. These frustrations always seem to be part of my experience with Smoke and whenever I'm working there's always something crappy waiting around the corner. Far from being 'ready-to-hand'...

[arichards]

After spending 5 minutes continually pressing escape and pressing the stop render button (for five hand hurting minutes), I just gave up the ghost and forced quit. Waste of 12 hours of electricity and locked up software. To put icinng on cake, the error report has been sending info for the last five minutes. That also seems to be stuck. For every joy that this software gives me there is a real kick in the head where it just simply does not respond. I really hate to come out with a cliche "but something needs to be done". I've been using this software now for around four years and it has hardly moved on a jot in terms of continually getting in your way. I've taken to using Premiere for basic editing and it really is paradise in terms of the transparency in usage. The arcane world of Smoke and all its strops that you have to work around just makes me want to rant rant rant, which I guess is what I'm doing. I now have yet another project that keeps kicking me in the face with long load times and then the inability to intervene in a render. How I wish another piece of software would come along and do what I want...

[ksirul]

I've been having similar issues and I feel your pain.  I'm on a new Mac Pro 12 core with 64gb RAM Mavericks 10.9.2.  Stop render not working and, 2 nights ago, I left Smoke rendering over night as it said 5 hours to render.  This is a 40 minute doc with lots of subtitles.  That's another story.  Yesterday, I spent the day between a couple of projects.  Came back to this project, tweaked 3 shots and was ready to export when I realized that all renders are now gone, plus, not all but some shots with Pulldown added ina Connect FX, had black over the first few seconds of the shot.  If I remove the pulldown effect, the shot re-appears.  Another 5 hours to render but I need to deliver today so I set an export for overnight and it started to re-render.  When I came in this morning it, of course, had crashed.  Very frustrating. 

[arichards]

I feel your pain likewise. When it works it is a joy but these really are something more major than mere stumbling blocks, they're major mojor interuptions that happen too frequently. Like I said, I never really worry about loading projects or being able to stop a render that could take ages. The former is a real pain especially for me at the moment. I want some advise from AD here; it's like a graveyard. I've even transferred the single sequence across to a fresh project, flushed all the renders and still this new project is taking an age (it's still loading now) to get going. Why should I have to wait 2 hours or more to start working on a project again. I did spend some of yesterday saving all the cfx's from the slices to then plan on just stripping everything down to the bare clips and trying to build them back up but I have timewarps in those and stripping the cfx's leaves the clips shorter. I'll have to make a note of the outpoints on the timeline, which I'd do if I knew that the sequence would load.

Why then would a project with just one sequence in that is not calling on any render files from the other stalled project still take an absolute age to load. This really should be basic stuff that I shouldn't have to worry in any way at all about 'cept I find myself continually stuck with waiting around a marathon age. Was soll das?

Cheers

Tony

[ksirul]

It looks like you have an older computer than I do so this may be different and we're still not sure if this is the case but it is looking like a good lead.  AD support was looking at my system (new Mac Pro, Mavericks 10.9.2) and it's looking like either the OS or Smoke is not recognizing if we assign additional RAM to Smoke.  It may not even be assigning the minimum needed regardless of what we do.  Support is looking into it for a solution and I'll post back my findings.  Any one else see this behavior?  I'm wondering if Maverics 10.9.4 will fix this at all?)

KEN

[arichards]

Hi Ken,

I have the 2013 (tubular) nMacPro with D700s, so I think that we are on the same wave length as far as that is concerned. I have 64GB of RAM and have it on the default setting of allowing Smoke to take as much as it needs (which never seems to be above 4.5ish GB). It is not a consistent problem but three times in the last few months I've had Smoke take hours to load up an affected project. I couldn't help but laugh the other day as I simply left the computer on while I was doing other things and my timing had it at 5 hours to load. Wtf was happening for those 5 hours that Smoke needed to take that long in loading? It's not like the project really is that complicated. I eve tried flushing the renders and dragging the sequence into a new project. Surely then it was just a bunch of fresh metadata? Nope it still takes ages to load. Next stage is to render the project out on really low settings (shadow and aa, etc.) and then drag saved cfx's onto fresh slices just using the timings from the last timeline. If that new project takes hours to load then I'll just have to start everything from scratch again on it and think that there's something spooky haunting the cfx's I created, some revenant?

Cheers

Tony

[arichards]

Whilst I didn't sadly get to recover my project due to the three backups also being corrupted I must big-up the support I got on this from their London office. Two helped by teamviewing my computer and although it wasn't in the end a success I have to really underline how great they both were in going through my system. I got some tips on workflow to help prevent losing work in the future. Thanks so much guys...

Cheers

Tony