PrepareOutputDir cleared every file in the output dir whose name started
with the output pattern's prefix. The preview stage writes its MOV and MP4
into that same folder from the same basename ({outputDir}/{base}.mov), so
they matched the prefix and were deleted before aerender started.
The dir is not private to one export: outputDir is keyed on the shot's
manually-set shotVersion, not on the export, so re-queuing without a
Version Up renders into the folder again. That is exactly the "No preview"
workflow - export scaled, reverse the scale, re-render only the EXRs and
inherit the earlier MOV - and inheritPreviewMedia then handed the new
export a deliveryMovPath pointing at the file the render had just removed.
Nothing surfaced it: the review MP4 is an uploaded blob and still played,
and DeliveryStage treats a missing MOV as non-fatal, so the package
silently shipped EXRs with no viewing copy.
Match on prefix and extension instead, via a new
SequencePattern.MatchesOutputFile - the predicate ValidationStage and
DeliveryStage already applied inline. Crashed-attempt cleanup is unchanged;
only files with a different extension are now spared.
JobExecutor's post-render stats loop matched on prefix alone too. With the
media no longer deleted it would have counted the MOV/MP4 as frames and
failed validation's file_count check, so it uses the same matcher.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Production fallout after enabling it: the trimmed EXR footage started
after the head handle as intended, but the overlay's burn-in timecode
(hardcoded to start at frame 1001) did not shift with it, so the
delivered burn-in no longer matched the footage. The picture-lock
reference render also never worked correctly in practice. Reverts the
AE panel checkbox, the preview-build script's trim/reference logic, and
the server/worker plumbing around it back to their pre-feature state
(82dfaee) — untrimmed previews, no picture-lock reference, overlay
timecode correct again.
The noPictureLock/piclockRefKey schema columns and their migration are
deliberately left in place: they're already applied in production, and
dropping an applied migration's file risks the next `prisma migrate
deploy`. They sit unused and harmless until this is revisited.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Manipulating startTime/outPoint on previewComp's SHOT layer touched a
comp duplicated from the artist-authored template, whose slate/shot
timing relationship the build script doesn't own -- and it dropped the
slate frame in production. The trim now happens one level down, on the
private single-layer footage precomp this script fully controls;
previewComp's own sizing logic is untouched from before this feature
existed, since it already generalizes correctly to any shotComp
duration.
Also threads the picture-lock skip reason through to the export's
timeline, so a shot missing sequence timecodes or a matching picture
lock file is visible without digging into worker-machine logs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Previews used to ship the full padded (handle-included) render to
clients, with an artist manually pulling picture lock and hand-trimming
the comp to match. The automated preview stage now trims the client
comp to the picture-lock edit itself (a fixed handle count off each
end, per the studio's existing convention) and separately builds an
ungraded, full-duration picture-lock reference MP4 as a diagnostic
sidecar to check back against. A new "No Picture Lock" panel checkbox
is the single override for shots where picture lock is missing or
wrong, falling back to today's untrimmed behavior.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Blender work is not a shot submission: no Export, no version, no
validation, QC or delivery. It is "Ctrl+F12, but on the farm", so it is
modelled as what it is — a queue entry and nothing more.
That turned out to need very little. Claim, progress, fail and
complete-render already tolerated a job with no Export behind them, so a
Blender job reuses the whole lifecycle; RenderJob gains projectId, label
and submittedBy so a job with no shot code still has something to show.
Capability gating is new and was already missing: the claim now filters
job types by the machine's reported tools. Without it a workstation
without Blender would claim Blender work and fail it repeatedly, burning
the attempts while a machine that could have rendered it sat idle. The
worker asks for Blender jobs unconditionally and the server refuses them
— trusting the worker to self-select would have left the same hole.
The runner treats a clean exit with no saved frames as a failure:
Blender exits 0 when a frame range is empty or an output path is
unwritable, and a job that silently rendered nothing is the worst
outcome available.
Standalone jobs auto-requeue on a transient failure like any other work;
delivery builds are deliberately excluded, since a half-written package
wants a human first.
Adds the Blender add-on (BlenderPanel/) and its docs. The add-on refuses
to submit an unsaved file — the farm opens the .blend from disk, so
unsaved changes would render the previous state without warning. Its
payload is pinned by a contract test, since add-on and server only ever
meet over JSON.
Worker 1.5.0. Adds migration 20260815000000_blender_render_jobs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Completes RenderPipeline2 phases 3-5. Additive throughout: with
validation.enabled=false the pipeline behaves exactly as before.
Validation (§8) runs on the worker straight after a render, while it
still holds the job and the files are local. Everything is read from the
EXR header — one 64 KB read per sampled frame, no pixel decode — so the
engine needs no oiiotool. The render job deliberately stays open through
the stage, so a worker that dies there is reaped and retried instead of
stranding the export in VALIDATING.
Timecode is the primary check and is anchored on the plate, never the
API: measured on the live show, Shot.timecodeStart is the editorial
in-point and sits one handle-length (8f) ahead of the plate, so checking
against it would pass the defective exports and fail the correct ones.
Reference precedence is manifest timing plate -> plate found on disk ->
API value, and the API rank is WARN-only. The panel now resolves plate
provenance by walking the comp's own footage layers, so the worker never
guesses which element carries the comp's timing.
Verified against real studio renders via the new --validate mode: it
catches both defect classes seen in shipped work — the +8 handle offset
and frame-derived timecode (00:00:41:17 = frame 1001 at 24fps).
QC (§10) is one service behind two front doors, API-key for the panel
and session for the web. PASS means ready to upload and nothing else;
FAIL sets the comp task to CHANGES. The panel gains a QC section that
imports the real EXR sequence at full res rather than the H.264.
Delivery (§11) rides the existing queue as a DELIVERY_BUILD job: hard
links with a copy fallback, verification by re-hashing delivered bytes
against the validation-time digest, manifest.json and the CSV report.
fsutil hardlink list is unavailable over SMB, so link identity is never
queried — reading the bytes back covers links and copies alike.
Also fixes ApiClient.ProgressAsync throwing on transport failure, which
would have aborted work in flight during a brief server outage; progress
reporting is best-effort by contract.
Removes the stale RenderWorker/ rule from the root .gitignore. The
worker's source is tracked like the rest of the repo and its own
.gitignore already covers bin/, obj/ and publish/; the rule silently
excluded new files while the existing 20 stayed tracked.
Not yet applied: migration 20260813000000 was hand-written because the
dev database was unavailable — run prisma migrate deploy and verify
before relying on it. None of this has run against a live server.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
One "Queue Export" click now renders the EXR sequence, then rebuilds the shot
headlessly with the studio slate/overlay template to produce the delivery MOV
and review MP4. Implements RenderPipeline2 phases 1-2 plus the preview stage.
Server:
- New models Export, RenderJob, ExportEvent, Machine, WorkerHeartbeat, plus
Project.deliveryConfig and per-submission slate fields (Export.vfxScope,
Export.submissionNote, inherited from the shot's previous export).
Both migrations are purely additive; no existing column is touched.
- lib/render-pipeline: server-enforced state machine, transactional version
increment with supersede, atomic FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED claim gated by
machine availability windows, and a lease reaper run from instrumentation.ts.
- /api/ext/* endpoints for the panel and workers; session-auth mirrors under
/api/render and /api/machines for the web UI.
- Pipeline pages: render queue, export detail, machine monitoring, plus an
Exports tab on shot detail.
RenderWorker (.NET 8 Windows service, new):
- Registration, heartbeat as cancel channel, claim loop, aerender runner with
progress parsing and stall watchdog, crash recovery and disk-spooled
reporting that survives server downtime.
- Preview stage: headless AE assembles the preview comp into a throwaway AEP
with both output modules queued, then a single aerender pass renders them.
Preview jobs are not claimed while an interactive AE session is open, so an
artist's project is never taken over.
AE panel: Queue Export with live status polling, urgent flag, retry, and the
VFX Scope / Submission Note fields. Every existing panel action is unchanged.
Preview chaining ships disabled behind SystemConfig preview.enabled.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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