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I would like to render a lengthy video sequence in the VSE faster using network render.

It works great for 3D animations but I can't get it to work with video sequences. The result is usually a blank screen with audio only. Has it been done before?

mantlepro
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  • Rendering several sections on different computers as mentioned @martinlindelof and then put them together in avidemux, succeeding in less than a second – rowilsonH Apr 01 '16 at 22:47
  • Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/38899/2843 – Samoth Apr 02 '16 at 20:57

2 Answers2

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a possible workaround would be use dropbox or have the source .blend on the network file servers. Open on different machines and use the Star Frame: & Frame Skip: settings in render panel.

  • Computer#1: Star Frame 1: & Frame Skip: 5
  • Computer#2: Star Frame 2: & Frame Skip: 5
  • Computer#3: Star Frame 3: & Frame Skip: 5
  • Computer#4: Star Frame 4: & Frame Skip: 5

and so on, thats just a workaround, cannot find a addon for this either.

martinlindelof
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You cannot have more than one contributor to an open file (video or otherwise), frame sequence renders avoid this by allocating a render instance (multiple machines) to each frame. If you want to render a contiguous video file (with or without audio) you can only have one device create it.

Alternatively you could render portions across various machines and stitch them together later (faster if no additional effects are required). Although this would result in re compression of frames.

3pointedit
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  • Good point... I suppose the workflow could be something like this: split the sequence up into 5-10 min blocks; farm out to x number of computers; have each render their portion to a lossless format; collect each movie to central location, mux them together and then apply final compression. If only I was savvy enough to create a python plugin that could do this automatically. – mantlepro Feb 13 '14 at 22:13