User Manual

When Renders Fail
It is a fact of life that render queues occasionally fail. The composition has an error, the power
goes out, or a computer is accidentally disconnected from the network are some causes for
failure. If no one is available to monitor the render, the risk that an entire queue may sit inactive
for several hours may become a serious problem.
Fusion Studio includes a variety of measures to protect the queue and ensure that the render
continues even under some of the worst conditions.
Automatic Rejoining of the Queue
If a Render Node becomes unavailable to the Render Master for any reason, frames assigned to
that Render Node are reassigned among the remaining Render nodes in the list.
When the Render Node becomes available for rendering again, it will signal the Render Master
that it is ready to render again, and new frames will be assigned to that Render Node.
This is why it is important to set the Render Master in the network preferences of the Render
Nodes. If the master is not set, the Render Node will not know what master to contact when it
becomes available.
In the Fusion Render Node Preferences, select the Tweaks panel. Using the Last Slave Restart
Timeout field, you can enter the number of seconds Fusion waits after the last Render Node
goes offline before aborting that queue and waiting for direct intervention.
Relaunching Render Nodes with Fusion Server
Fusion Server is a small utility installed with Fusion Studio and the Render Node.
The application is silently launched by each Fusion Render Node when started.
Fusion Server monitors the Render Node to ensure that the Render Node is still running during
a render. It consumes almost no CPU cycles and very little RAM. If the monitored Render Node
disappears from the system’s process list without issuing a proper shutdown signal, as can
happen after a crash, the Fusion Server relaunches the Render Node, allowing it to rejoin
the render.
Fusion Server will only detect situations where the Render Node has exited abnormally. If the
Render Node is still in the process list but has become unresponsive for some reason, the
Fusion Server cannot detect the problem. Hung processes like this are detected and handled
by frame timeouts, as described below.
Frame Timeouts
Frame timeouts are a fail-safe method of canceling a Render Node’s render if a frame takes
longer than the specified time (with a default of 60 minutes, or one hour). The frame timeout
ensures that an overnight render will continue if a composition hangs or begins swapping
excessively and fails to complete its assigned frame.
The timeout is set per composition in the queue. To change the timeout value for a composition
from the default of 60 minutes, right-click on the composition in the Render Manager’s queue
list and select Set Frame Timeout from the contextual menu.
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