Frame Number to rrClient Name        

Very often you have a frame number, but you do not know which Client has rendered it or why it was not rendered broken.

These are two ways to find the issue:

  1. Frame List
    In rrControl, tab "Job Log" you find a table named "Frames Rendered".
    It shows you the name of the rrClient and a time.

    The next step is to select the right logfile with that date.
  2. rrViewer
    Select the frame that is broken.
    The Client name should be shown on the image and in the top bar.
    If you right-click on the image, you can open the render log of the frame.

Free client does not get a job

If you have free clients and the scene is not send to such a free client, then select the scene and the client in rrControl and use the Debug menu item "Show "send job to client?" decision"




Windows drive mappings


If you are running the client/server as a service, then you need to tell RR that it should map your drives.

It does not matter if the user logged in maps drives manually.

A service has to map drives itself, it runs in a completely different environment.




Render Environment - Windows Registry

If you have a plugin that has saved the license information into the current users registry, then it can happen that the RR service rendering is not able to access that information.


Background:

Royal Render runs as a system service, but executes renders as a specified user. When this user is logged in to the desktop, RR will access that user's registry. If another user is logged in or if there is no user logged in, RR will access the local system account registry. This is an effect of the windows background login. 


Solution:

One solution is to have RR enter the appropriate registry values before each render. 

First, export the license registry. In this example we are using the Red Giant Software plugins.


E.g. the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Red Giant Software" registry tree from a user on a computer where you have installed and tested your desired plug-ins. This will give you a .reg file that looks something like this: 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Red Giant Software] 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Red Giant Software\CompositeWizard] 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Red Giant Software\CompositeWizard\AE] 

"serial"="PCWX################" 


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Red Giant Software\TrapcodeParticular] 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Red Giant Software\TrapcodeParticular\AE] 

"serial"="TCPX################" 



Manually import this .reg file (double-click it) on at least one other machine for testing. If you're using interactive serials, you will just be able to open AE and apply plug-ins to see if they work. Render-only serials will always error when used interactively, so to test them, you must kick off a command line render either manually or through RR. This is the most tedious part of this process. 


Once you are confident that your .reg file is working, place it somewhere network accessible. For example: 

\\FILESERVER\SHARE\afxTCRGRenderSerials.reg



Then, you have to have RR exec that file. RR's setenv pre-render files provide an easy way to do this. Edit this file: 

\\RRSERVER\RRSHARE\render_apps\_setenv\win\afx.bat



And add these two lines: 

reg import \\FILESERVER\SHARE\afxTCRGRenderSerials.reg 

reg add "HKCU\Software\Red Giant Software" /f /v ConfiguredByRoyalRender /d "AFX Setenv: %date% %time%"



The first line imports the .reg file.

The second line makes a registry entry with the last date and time RR's setenv was triggered on a machine; this is useful for detective work.