New in CS5, why can't I render a file larger than 2.15 GB to a network drive?

[Guest]

This started just as soon as I installed AE CS5. If I try to render to a shared network drive, once the file reaches 2.15 GB in size, either AE render crashes or the render completes but the file size is 2.15GB and it will not open or import back into AE. Rendering to a local drive works.

Why is this happening?

[Guest]

Why isnt this fixed yet?

This is a serious setback in installing CS5 in my production facility.

I also teach at local college and have expressed that its not worth upgrading to CS5 until this is resolved.

[Todd_Kopriva]

> Why isnt this fixed yet?

As stated a few times on this thread, this fix relies on a fix from Apple. Such things don't happen instantaneously. We're working on it.

This is a serious setback in installing CS5 in my production facility.

I also teach at local college and have expressed that its not worth upgrading to CS5 until this is resolved.

There are several workarounds available, as described above. If you would like help with these, let us know.

This problem only affects QuickTime movies rendered across a network. It doesn't affect other container types, image sequences, QuickTime movies rendered to a local drive, or QuickTime movies below 2.15GB.

[Guest]

We use AFP off a XServe Leopard system.

The resources and AE docs reside on the network.

Even if you render to local, this doesnt work.

Ive tested everything under the sun.

We even installed MainConcept MPEG Encoder and used that as the codec.

It just crashes trying that route.

Were still forced to use CS4.

Having a hard time explaining this to my company after spending 12k on upgrades.

[Guest]

Since Im in-between projects I figured Id test this again.

Nope it does not work for us here using CS5 projects sitting locally on the Mac Pro.

No network at all and still this 2GB file limit issue.

Then we purchased MainConcept Reference 2.1 MPEG Encoder.

Works great with CS4 (Render Output option).

Does not work under CS5 at all via Render Output.

Its been over a few months now and still problem persists?

And I thought CS4 was the worse upgrade ever (for us).

[fwstudio]

Hi Todd,

Thanks for all your help in explaining the problem publically. I just have a couple of quick questions if you don't mind.

1) If this bug truly lies with Apple (and I most certainly believe it does at its core), why doesn't Adobe reimplement their old way of doing things from CS3 (don't have CS4 in house, so I don't know if it works in that version) in the meantime to solve this particular problem? Seems like a waste to wait on Apple when Adobe already has in-house code that doesn't have this problem.

2) From the reports you've been getting (and this is open for anyone else to chime in on), is this issue only limited to Snow Leopard, or does it occur with Leopard 10.5 installations as well? My studio is finally all upgraded to 10.6 SL, and I don't have the time or energy to roll back a production machine to 10.5 just to see if the bug still occurs there.

Again, I appreciate the time you've taken to describe the problem, but it seems pretty disingenuous to lay the blame at Apple and wait for them to fix it rather than actively seek to find an appropriate solution within AE (not that I'm saying you guys are ignoring it completely). Every single motion graphics facility I've worked with in the Hollywood-based film/TV industry uses this workflow to render out product, and to continually recommend using workarounds doesn't seem like the best "solution" to the problem.

Jason

[Todd_Kopriva]

fwstudio,

I assure you that there are several people working within Adobe to address this issue.

The problem exists because a rather large set of functionality was moved to a new API, and that API has a deficiency. Fixing such an issue is not a fast thing, even when it involves only one company and its engineering teams; it is certainly not fast when multiple companies and their engineering teams are involved.

Don't think that my recommendations of workarounds are intended as dismissal of the issue. They're just the best that we can offer at this moment.

Regarding your question about Mac OSX v10.6 vs. 10.5: The OS isn't relevant. The change was between CS4 and CS5 and which QuickTime API we use.

[fwstudio]

Todd,

Thank you so much for your lightning fast response! As a former QA tester at Apple, I understand the process and lead times that go into such fixes. I absolutely appreciate all the hard work you guys are doing, and other than that AE CS5 is still a great product. If there's anything I can ever to to assist in testing, it would be my pleasure to do so. Thanks again, and happy new year to you and the entire CS5 dev crew!

Jason

[Luke_nexgen]

Todd,

Is there an update for this issue yet?

[Todd_Kopriva]

I can't give details, but I will say that I have seen encouraging action by Apple on addressing their end of this.

[Luke_nexgen]

Todd,

Thanks for the quick response.

quick comment:

Our  company also upgraded to CS5 and found we could not render quicktimes  from our local computers to our network drive. (Bossman was  pretty excited about that after almost a  10grand upgrade). However, we have three render boxes that are running  the CS5 render engine (also working over the same network) and those  little guys have no problem slapping  down quicktime files on the network drive (average file size abour 6 gigs)

[Guest]

Must be new option. Old multi-machine network render was frames only. Or maybe you have a script to take frames and export to QT. I'm up for that if it works 🙂

[Vision3Jason]

Todd,

Thanks for the quick follow-up. That's going to the plan for now. Image Sequence –>.mov–>Network.

Thanks again for working on it.

-J

[Lang_Walker]

It's been 7 months since this problem was first reported here ... and it's still driving us crazy with no end in sight. Has this just become a permanent part of CS5 now? Do we just need to wait for CS6 to see if "newly restored – ability to render quicktime in a network environment" is listed as an exciting new feature?

Not that we plan on upgrading Adobe software very quickly in the future given the problems we've had with CS5 After Effects quicktime rendering and CS5 Photoshop type tool crashes ... and Adobe's glacial response to fixing anything (except for incessant Bridge and Pixel Blender Toolkit tweaks).

[colorkite]

In my opinion - this whole issue was flubbed by the Adobe team. This is a HUGE setback for network based workflows (as seen in numerous posts). Your suggestion of rendering image sequences really bites for the many workflows that rely on scratch audio from AE. Adobe should have realized this whole issue far before releasing CS5 and should have been working with Apple on this in the betas so professional's dont have to suffer the consequences. Adobe, I know you are working with Apple on a fix but DUDES, if you are going to use another companie's API you best be checking to see if things work properly before selling your product for big moneys.

Looking forward to a major bug fix. I refuse to request this a feature...

[Lang_Walker]

@colorkite: Amen!

[Lang_Walker]

We found another huge quicktime bug in AFX CS5 the other day ... A large prores 444 hq quicktime file that we were splitting (12100 x 1920) opened and rendered out completely wrong (some bizarre internal re-tiling of the image) on 60% of our machines (mac pros / 10.6.4 / 16 gb ram / etc). And unfortunately this happened first on the machines we were using to produce the deliverables. Total nightmare. I'll post this elsewhere under its own heading after doing a bit more testing, but the first thing I tried was using AFX CS3. Worked perfectly. CS5 is not a reliable production tool when used with quicktime, full stop.

[colorkite]

Yeah - there are certain bugs taht are annoying and there are others that completely disrupt workflow. Unfortunately this is the worse of the two. Troubleshooting a flub like this in the 11th hour of our projects is a major bummer, to say the least.. Something which we expect to avoid when we pay large sums of money for adobe software.

[Lang_Walker]

Hi Todd:

Are we just going to have to wait until OSX 10.7 comes out in July/August sometime for this to be fixed?

[theoutfitvfx]

If you have the ability to connect to a network Server over NFS you will not have this issue.  I have had this problem for a long time with both Shake and Nuke.  Not sure what is different about NFS but there is no limitation on file size.  I just tested CS 5 and Nuke and both fail when connecting to our server over SMB, but when connecting over NFS everything works fine.

Shame on Apple and Quicktime.  Quicktime is my worst nightmare in our environment and trying to manage all of it's flaws in a professional environment is such a waste of time

[elbagly]

theoutfitvfx,

Thanks for the NFS workaround!!!

I can confirm this works.

[JeremyNeish]

Did this get fixed in 5.5?  Please say yes!  This is driving me crazy.

And yes, Adobe isn't alone in this, I've been complaining about this buggy QuickTime API from Apple over a year now.  REDCine-X has the same limitation/bug for the same reason:

http://reduser.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-48966.html

[JeremyNeish]

I'll answer my own question.  Nope.  And Lion doesn't help either.  BOO...Adobe & Apple! This can't be that hard to fix... since you both had it figured out in the past.

[Lang_Walker]

Wow ... double fail.  Unbelievable.

Thanks PK for notifying us of those results. We weren't planning on stampeding to the 5.5 upgrade anyway (imho, having to pay for a dot upgrade is a bit of a kick in the teeth when the initial offering is still so buggy) ... but I was really hoping OSX10.7 + CS5.5 would have solved this. Maybe final release of 10.7 will be different? One can only hope the feuding giants eventually get over their civil war and back to their job of making our lives easier ...

[Todd_Kopriva]

> One can only hope the feuding giants eventually get over their civil war and back to their job of making our lives easier ...

We're not feuding. We're working together on this. I can't share the details of our communication, but the communication is there, and it's not a feud.

Regarding this being supposedly easy to fix becuase it worked before:

After Effects CS4 used an old QuickTime API. After Effects CS5 can't use the old API because it doesn't work with 64-bit values and doesn't provide some crucial features. Apple told us to use a new API, so we did. It has a bug. Apple has acknowledged that bug. They are working on a fix. We hope that it comes soon. If you do, too, then ask Apple to hurry. We certainly are.

[Guest]

Not to start anything but I was at NAB and had a few goals in mind.
One was to talk to someone from Adobe about this.
Well after a few demo jockeys (actually not even just the ones working on the perimieter), none of them have heard of this problem.

Funny there must have been an invsible force-field of something cause all surrounding vendors around the Adobe booth seems to know about the  ugly thruth.

I for one am skipping our enterprise upgrade to 5.5.