A 25-shot episode took about an hour to package when the linking itself
is instant. All of it was verification: every delivered file was read
back and hashed, and at ~100 MB/s over SMB one 2.8 GB shot costs 30 s.
Re-hashing a hard link cannot disagree with validation. The entry is a
second name for the same data, so it re-reads the exact bytes that were
already hashed — half an hour per episode to prove something that cannot
be false. Verification is now proportional to what was actually done:
copies are read back in full, links carry over the validation-time digest.
Linking has one gap hashing covered incidentally: a source changed after
it passed QC, which a link would carry faithfully. Source timestamps are
now checked against the export's validation time, which costs a stat per
file rather than a full read.
"verifyMode": "always-hash" restores unconditional read-back for a
production that requires it.
Worker 1.3.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
UNG_110_030_010 v002 failed with a 461614-frame offset on a render whose
timecode was correct. Two causes, both in how the plate reference was
recorded.
The comp held three same-length elements and the timing plate was picked
by duration alone, so a PRERENDER won on layer order. Using a pre-render
as the timecode reference is circular anyway: it was rendered from this
comp, so it can only ever agree with it — including when both are wrong.
Only footage under the Footage Root is now eligible; among those, longest
still wins.
The offset itself came from the plate's frameStart. AE writes renders as
"..._PRERENDER_01001.exr" while delivered plates use "....01001.exr", and
the parser only handled the dot form, so the number fell back to the
comp's frame range — 462615 against a render numbered from 1001. Both
separators now parse, and an unparseable name omits the field rather than
filling it with a number from the wrong coordinate system.
Verified against the real manifest: the BG01 plate is now chosen over
both pre-renders, and all three filenames parse to 1001.
Panel 2.2.1, worker 1.2.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The preview manifest now carries the show name, taken from the project's
name rather than its code — a slate is read by a human, so "Ungovernable"
beats "UNG_S1".
Both the worker's headless build and the panel's own preview set it, so a
farm-generated preview and an artist-built one still match. The panel
writes it whenever it touches an overlay, not only when building a
preview, so existing comps pick it up on the next Add Overlay.
The slate's other properties are title case ("Date", "Scene") while the
overlay's are upper ("DATE", "SHOT NAME"), so both spellings of SHOW are
attempted; a template exposing neither reports its actual property names
as a build warning rather than failing silently, matching how the VFX
Scope and Submission Note fields already behave.
Panel 2.2.0, worker 1.2.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A render carries frame numbers in two unrelated systems. The comp is
anchored to its plate's timecode, so its timeline runs 1247792-1247896;
the output module names files from 1001. Validation compared the file
numbers against the comp range and failed every correctly-rendered shot
by ~1.2 million frames — first_frame, last_frame and missing_frames all
reporting a defect that was not there.
The manifest now carries outputFrameStart (the output module's starting
number, house convention 1001) alongside the comp range. Count and
contiguity are measured on the output numbering; first/last compare
against outputFrameStart and are SKIPPED on older manifests, where the
count and gap checks still hold on their own.
The same conflation broke the API timecode fallback: it anchored on the
comp's frameStart while the render's first frame is 1001, producing a
+1246791 frame "offset". Shot.timecodeStart is the edit in-point and the
plate carries handleFrames of head handle, so the reference is the API
value less handles, anchored on the render's own first frame.
Verified on the shot that reported it: UNG_107_051_010 v004 now passes
count, contiguity and a plate-anchored timecode match. Regression tests
cover both coordinate systems, including that a genuine +8 handle offset
still fails.
Panel 2.1.2.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A studio whose render output root changed carries both conventions in the
database permanently — changing render.outputRoot only affects new
exports, so old rows keep the path they were queued with. On UNG that is
//SAN/renders/{projectCode}/... for older exports and //SAN/{showId}/...
for current ones, living side by side under one Export Root.
applyPathMappings returned only the first prefix match, so one rewrite
had to serve both and could not. It now returns every match and
resolveServerPath tests each for existence, which is what the candidate
ordering was there for.
Verified against the live drive: with "//SAN/=V:/_EXPORTS/UNG/" the
legacy export resolves via the mapping and current ones via the Export
Root re-base; with both rewrites mapped, all three resolve directly.
Panel 2.1.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
RenderPipeline2.md §11 carries the design and the normative rules, but
there was nothing telling someone how to actually build and ship a
package. DELIVERY_WORKFLOW.md covers the path from "QC passed" to "client
has it": eligibility, building, what lands on disk, verification and its
failure modes, marking delivered, and configuration.
It explains hard links properly — a second name for the same data, not a
copy or a shortcut — since that is the part most likely to worry someone
looking at a package that appeared instantly and used no disk.
Also documents the DELIVERY_BUILD stage in the worker README, which
previously mentioned deliveries only in passing, and adds a
documentation index to the root README.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
QC's Open Render used the server's outputDir verbatim. The server
addresses renders from its own root (render.outputRoot, e.g. //SAN),
which the render worker translates via its own pathMappings because it
runs as a service account — the panel had no equivalent, so Open Render
failed on any machine that could not resolve that root.
Resolution now tries, in order: an optional Path Mappings setting, the
server path as given, then re-basing on Export Root. The last one is why
this usually needs no configuration at all: both sides lay renders out as
{root}/{showId}/{episode}/{shot}/{version}, so the tail can simply be
re-attached. A failure names every candidate it tried rather than
reporting one path that was never going to work.
Diagnostics gained the same check against a real folder from the QC
queue, since "Export Root exists" and "this machine can reach a render
the server wrote" are different questions and only the second one breaks
QC.
Verified against the live V: drive: a //SAN path, a backslash variant and
an explicitly-mapped path all resolve to the real render folder, while an
unknown root and a different show correctly resolve to nothing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The 29 MB VFXReviewWorker_<date>.zip was swept into the previous commit
by the .gitignore change that started tracking worker source. It is a
build artifact: reproducible from any commit via scripts/publish.ps1,
and the version stamp (1.1.0+a4f8226) already traces a deployed exe back
to its source, so the zip carries no information the repo lacks — while
costing ~29 MB of permanent history per publish.
Untracked and ignored. The file stays on disk for copying to
workstations; only git stops following it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The .NET 10 SDK cleans the publish directory, and an incremental build
then skips copying content into it — so a second publish produced a
package with the exe but no scripts\vfxr_build_preview.jsx. The exe loads
that script from its own folder at runtime, so the package would have
installed cleanly and failed every preview job.
The Content item now sets CopyToPublishDirectory explicitly
(CopyToOutputDirectory only governs the build folder), and publish.ps1
copies the script itself rather than trusting the SDK, keeping the
existing verification as the backstop that caught this.
Verified by publishing twice in a row: the incremental second run, which
previously failed, now produces a complete package and zip.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"What is running where" was answerable only by asking someone. Each tool
now reports its own version on startup into a ToolVersion registry, shown
on Pipeline → Machines.
The worker's version moves out of config.json and into the assembly:
a hand-maintained string on each machine is exactly the thing that goes
stale, and a machine reporting a version it is not running is worse than
no version at all. publish.ps1 stamps the git SHA via SourceRevisionId,
so a deployed exe traces back to a commit (1.1.0+feb1c7b).
The panel gains PANEL_VERSION, shown in its title and every diagnostics
report, and pings on load.
Staleness is derived rather than declared: the newest version seen for a
tool is the benchmark, so updating one machine is what flags the rest.
There is no expected-version list to keep in sync — which would have been
one more thing to forget.
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>
Build Shot only ever worked on UNG. Two assumptions were baked in: that a shot's
plates sit flat in a folder named after the episode, and that a shot code is
three letters followed by three 3-digit tokens. DH2_VFX breaks both -- it groups
a shot's plates under a {shotCode}/ folder, has no episode level, and its showId
contains a digit and an underscore.
- findSequenceFolders prefers {group}/{shotCode}/ and falls back to UNG's flat
{group}/{shotCode}_* scan, so both layouts work with no migration -- moving
delivered footage would break the links in every AE project pointing at it. An
existing-but-empty shot folder returns nothing rather than falling through, so
stray plate folders sitting beside a shot cannot be read as its footage.
Underscore-prefixed folders are never shots or plates.
- getFootageGroupFolder replaces getEpisodeRootFolder: the {showId}_{episode}
folder for episodic shows, the show root otherwise. A scene filters the shot
list, it is not a directory -- which is why Build Shot on DH2 was looking in
V:/_FOOTAGE/DH2/027.
- Shot codes are now parsed by stripping the known showId prefix
({showId}_{episode}_{scene}_{shot} for episodic, {showId}_{scene}_{shot} for
standard) rather than matching /[A-Z]{3}_.../ or counting underscores.
extractShotCode keeps the old pattern as a fallback so a comp from a different
show than the selected one still reads. Same anchoring in deriveEpisodeCode
(no more hardcoded "UNG_"), deriveEpisodeAPIValue, isEpisodeCode and the
getShotExportDir episode fallback.
- Two positional cuts of the same class, found on the way: the DELIVERY path and
Pull Picture Lock's episode-prefix match both used shotCode.substring(0, 7).
Both now go through getEpisodePrefix(). Output is identical for UNG and DH2
(DH2_VFX happens to be 7 characters); the one behaviour change is that
standard shows no longer get a constant group level under DELIVERY/, and DH2
has no delivery history to move.
Verified against the live V:/_FOOTAGE tree by running the real functions under a
Folder stub: UNG_102_019_010 resolves its BG01/FG01 plates via the flat scan, and
DH2_VFX_027_010 and DH2_VFX_066_380 resolve theirs via the grouped layout. Not
yet exercised in After Effects.
Initialise Workspace is untouched and still hardcoded to UNG -- next.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A slate or burn-in mistake is usually caught after a preview has already
succeeded, and there was no way back: retryPreview required PREVIEW_FAILED, and
READY_FOR_QC only led on to QC_FAILED/READY_FOR_DELIVERY/SUPERSEDED. The only
recourse was a whole new export, re-rendering every EXR and burning a version
number to fix a typo.
- transitions: READY_FOR_QC and QC_FAILED can now go back to GENERATING_PREVIEW.
- regeneratePreview() rebuilds the manifest from scratch rather than patching
anything, so shot code, episode/scene, frame count, slate date and burn-ins
are all re-derived exactly as on a first-time preview. Validated EXRs are
reused and the version number is untouched -- this re-delivers the same
version, it does not make a new one.
- vfxScope and submissionNote are frozen onto the Export at submission time, so
regenerating refreshes that snapshot from the shot's slate fields (explicit
override wins, same precedence as createExport). Slate text edited on the web
app's Slate tab is therefore picked up.
- finalizePreview replaces the media on the export's existing Version instead of
stacking a second row, so the version number stays put and reviewer notes and
annotations survive the reslate. First-time previews are unaffected.
- POST /api/ext/exports/{id}/regenerate-preview exposes it to the panel.
- Panel: Regenerate Previews button, gated on the same statuses as the server,
with a confirm covering what is and is not reused.
Also fixes the slate description source: the Slate tab authors
shot.slateDescription (falling back to shot.description) but the preview
manifest only ever read shot.description, so edits made there never reached the
rendered slate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
finalizePreview now retitles the export's task so its version suffix matches the
preview that was just uploaded (UNG_102_019_010_cmp_TT_v004 -> _v005), which is
the rename the manual batch upload already does on rename-and-upload. The new
nextTaskTitle helper mirrors nextExrOutputBase so the task title, EXR base and
preview filename all derive the suffix the same way. It uses the export's
versionString rather than versionNumber, since the DB number is bumped to stay
monotonic per task while the filename follows the shot's shotVersion.
The rename only fires when a Version was actually created, runs in the same
transaction, and is recorded in the ExportEvent note; the finalize response now
returns the task id, title and whether it changed. Task status is deliberately
untouched (pipeline renders must not resurface in the review flow, S10.0).
The headless preview build was addressing the slate's identity fields by index
only, so ShotName was never filled on the farm. setSlateIdentity writes both the
named property and the index -- the name-with-index-fallback pattern the panel
already uses for VersionName -- and warns with the template's actual property
names when neither resolves, instead of failing silently.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Panel export paths now mirror the server's layout
({exportRoot}/{showId}/[{episode} if episodic]/{shotCode}/{version}) via a new
getShotExportDir helper, so farm and local renders land in the same folder.
Folder creation moves into the per-shot loop so one unwritable path no longer
aborts the whole queue.
Also adds an optional `scene` query param to the ext shots endpoint.
Adds scripts/publish.ps1, which produces a self-contained single-file exe plus
the headless AE build script, optionally zipped for copying to a render machine.
Adds `VFXReviewWorker.exe --check`: resolves every configured path, confirms
aerender/AfterFX/the build script exist, verifies each pathMappings target is
reachable from that machine, and pings the server to confirm the API key is
accepted — exiting non-zero if anything would stop the worker running. Catches
a wrong path at install time rather than in the logs later.
Verified from the published binary: the single-file exe resolves its scripts
folder correctly, so the preview build script ships alongside the exe rather
than embedded and can be patched without a rebuild.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 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>
Adds scripts/publish.ps1, which produces a self-contained single-file exe plus
the headless AE build script, optionally zipped for copying to a render machine.
Adds `VFXReviewWorker.exe --check`: resolves every configured path, confirms
aerender/AfterFX/the build script exist, verifies each pathMappings target is
reachable from that machine, and pings the server to confirm the API key is
accepted — exiting non-zero if anything would stop the worker running. Catches
a wrong path at install time rather than in the logs later.
Verified from the published binary: the single-file exe resolves its scripts
folder correctly, so the preview build script ships alongside the exe rather
than embedded and can be patched without a rebuild.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 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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