#PAR
7 messages in this thread
What block limit setting do you use? I've heard 250 and 260 in here, I've been
using 210. The gist I got from the documentation was smaller is better (as
small as possible without degrading image quality), as larger blocks may not
get completely transferred (depending on HD speed) and cause flashes. I'm not
seeing flashes, I'm getting frame corruption. Dots, colored boxes, non-sync'd
(looking) frames. I can replace these frames by re-rendering the individual
(corrupted) frames, then splitting and joining frames to restore the animation.
What could cause 10+ individual frames to become corrupted in 4 different
animations (in different projects/directories) at the same time? This event
was caused (it seems) by a single animation. I rendered 270 frames, stopped
the rendering and checked the progress, rendered the remaining 120 frames, then
joined them in the controller. I played the file, it was corrupted, and so
were the other 4. I optimized the disk and checked them again. Still
corrupted. It might be worth mentioning that this animation was done at
564×360 resolution instead of 752×480, at the same block limit (210). I could
really use some help on this — all of you with PARs — Give me your opinion,
please. Thanks —
–John Wilson
Joseph,
Higher BLF's produce a cleaner image ie: less artifacts. The fact that you were
rendering at 564×360 should work to your advantage, not against you, as the
more pixels you have to process the more your pushing the compression and hard
disk.
I'm wondering if you have enough RAM to process the images? If you are
rendering from within 3DS you may not have enough memory allocated for the PAR.
As I render over a network, RAM is not being used by 3DS simultaneously. What I
would suggest is try rendering to HD first and then copy the files over to the
PAR without being inside 3DS, and see if you have the same problem. If not
you'll need to free up more space from 3DS with the CFIG386 command which is in
the 3DS docs. This will allow you to free up some RAM for use with the PAR. The
down side is that it won't be available to 3DS for rendering. So test it first
and see if the technique I outlined works and if it does then that's probably
the problem.
-JE
I appreciate the reply — My problem was with animations that had already been
rendered. They ran fine for weeks until I put another animation on the disk,
then 4 of them ended up with corrupted frames. The animation I put on was
corrupted, too. All of the previous 4 were rendered at 752×480, only the new
one was 536×360. Strange problem, unfortunately this is not the first time it
has happened.
–John
John:
Do you have the latest drivers from the DPS bulletin board? I'm stumped, I
don't know of anyone else this has happened to! The other thing to try is
reformatting your PAR hard disk.
Greg Pyros
As one who have had the same problem (it happend to me with 730 MB free) it
seems you have a defected hard drive.
there is a way to check if that's the problem:
1. Format your par.
2. Copy one tga file to your par as an ani file.
3. Duplicate the file.
4. Join the files.
5. Optimize.
6. Play the animation.
7. Go back to #3 (until your hard drive is full).
If at any point the par crashes then you have a defected HD, if that's the case
replace the HD. For the best service call Micropolis customer service and for
$50 they will send you a new one (next day delivery).
hope this will help.
RA. (SLP)
How full is your PAR hard drive, John?. It should be noted that PAR performance
may suffer as the system is forced to use the slower, inner tracks of the hard
drive. I would trouble-shoot this problem by re-formatting the hard drive,
testing for a good, high Block Limit amount (that works, of course) and
starting fresh with this animation. If the problem still exists, there may be
hardware problems to deal with, I would imagine. Also, when I have had problems
like yours, I have fixed them by 1) Deleteing the .ANI file in question. 2)
Optimizing the PAR HD. 3) Re-compiling the animation onto the HD. This may work
for you.
Good luck,
-Alan Iglesias
I am in the process of backing up all of the animations now. The disk has 801
mb free right now, though, so it really shouldn't be a problem. I am going to
try re-formatting and see if that helps —
–John