localityweather.render v1.0.20

Locality Weather Project Files

Manages project assets consisting mostly of JSON, text and audio files for integration with other Locality Weather systems.

RENAME PROJECT TO REPLCE THE NAME "Production" with "Render"

AE Render

Due to the historical support for automation via command-line, Locality Weather switched to Affect Effects as the parent driver of the workflow which will be highlighted by executing aerender with respetive locality specific parameters.

When using AE Render it is important to ensure the render machine has all related assets to include fonts.

AE render mode on a remote machine is setup by installing After Effects, logging out of the Adobe account, to ensure the license is freed, then placing a empty text file named "ae_render_only_node.txt" into the Documents folder executing the workflow.

Render Only Mode

• Install After Effects on the render-only machine.
• Place a blank file named ae_render_only_node.txt into the following location

Windows

• C:\Users\\Documents
• C:\Users\Public\Documents\Adobe

https://helpx.adobe.com/lv/after-effects/user-guide.html/lv/after-effects/using/automated-rendering-network-rendering.ug.html?promoid=9MZL4BGX&mv=other%20

IMPORTANT: Ensure the render machine is set to After Effect Render Only Mode otherwise have observed inconsistencies most likely attributed to it being in License Mode.

Adobe Media Encoder (AME)

Attempts to start and/or stop by various means were not consistent enough to implement in the workflow. AME lacks support for automation via command-line.

Switched to aerender.exec in order to support automation via command-line.

Moved audio to Affer Effects since the audio embedding Premiere Pro into After Effects would not update on refresh of assets by locality. Therefore the Premiere Pro sequence was removed since it was empty after moving audio into After Effects.

AfterCodecs

Plugin for After Effects to enhance the default output of AVI, which is very large, to a more standard encoder like MP4.

In After Effets, create a output (OM) template named "Locality Weather" on the render server otherwise it will fail.

Render Farm

Currently using "worker-farm" to manage the render process which queues each process across the available number of CPU cores. If more processes are queued than cores, it will wait for prior processes to complete then queue subsequent processes. It will requeue a process until it successfully completes.

The workflow was very successful on the local development machine.

EC2 4GDN Instance

Executing renders on this GPU instance produced inconsistent results due to GPU Failure exceptions. Through research found AWS offers NVIDIA drivers specific to these instances. Currently evaluating if the NVIDIA drivers resolve the GPU Failure issue.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/install-nvidia-driver.html#nvidia-GRID-driver

Renders are not consistent unless a user session is active therefore the LogonExpert auto-logon software is used to create an active user session on server start. Subsequent to logon, a Windows Scheduled Task is used to start the render.

Workflow

src/executeRender.js

Intiates the render process for the specified Locality Name.

Process Management

Scheduled Tasks

• Configured to trigger execute-render.cmd to start the render process.

FireDaemon, PM2, and User-Data

• FireDaemon, PM2, and User-Data were evaluated to activate the Render service on computer start but found the setup more complicated and/or inconsistent.

SSM Run Command

• Evaluated to activate the Render service but encountered issues that related to the lack of a User Session.
• Allows execution of remote EC2 commands to include running the nodejs render module proved less complicated and more consistent than the other solutions referenced above.
• SSM runs via a Windows Service using the default Local System account. If user permissions is required then change the account to another user (administrator) that matches the After Effects installed by the respective user.
• If renders do not complete as expected then it most likely indicates an asset is corrupt that prevents the project from loading in After Effects, this mostly affects the .aep project file for an unknown reason.
• Although SSM showed positive results it is not actively used since AE Render rendering requires an active user session.