Batch export files with different frame counts?

mooncaine · Post by **mooncaine** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 12:56 am

I've worked on 3 different ASP files today, and want to batch render them now. The Batch Export window asks for a start frame and end frame... but each of these ASP files is a different length.

What should I put there? For now, I'll try putting in a number high enough to include each file's frames.... but I won't know til rendering's done whether that was the right thing to do. Better to render about 100 frames too many than to lose a few.... I guess?

mooncaine · Post by **mooncaine** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:49 am

It looks like the answer to my question is that Batch Export will only export the range of frames specified in Project Settings for each file.... except that it seems to be rendering frame zero, too.

That is, it rendered frame zero for every file but the first one in the batch list. Not a big prob at all, but odd, since the program asks me what range I want, and I put in 1 - 860.

3 QT movies have rendered so far in one batch. I still had a few continuity probs between files, even though I used the Copy Current Frame… command. Not sure yet about all the errors, but one thing that changed was my background color. In one of the files, it jumps to all white at the start. Again, not sure why. I started them all from the same source, and made them in sequence. Maybe I accidentally set a key for that.

mooncaine · Post by **mooncaine** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 8:05 am

I think this is happening because the batch exporter does not apply the settings displayed to each file in the batch.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 9:01 am

Are you sure about frame 0 being included? I render Quicktime files all day, and every file starts with frame 1 as it should. Do you export SWF and did you check "extra SWF frame" in the project properties?

mooncaine · Post by **mooncaine** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 6:38 pm

Yes, thank you. I'm positive. To test that, I put something different on frame 0 [a color-change]. I'm exporting to QT, and I don't have "extra SWF frame" checked.

It seems [though I'm still not sure] that I must render frame 0 in order to get the soundtrack to be rendered in QT. I don't *need* the soundtrack in my final renders, but I do need to save time, and rendering to QT with audio saves me lots of time messing with a video program just to review my work. As far as I can tell, rendering QT with video compression: None, gets me audio. Rendering with Animation codec doesn't.

It may be that rendering to Animation in QT was causing the soundtrack to drop. My last render was compression: None again, from frame 0, and the audio was back in.