GENERAL

The Process Queue dialog can be opened from the corresponding button on the Main Menu bar in the Construct. The dialog can also be opened from within the Player, see also: Chapter 8 - Outputs.

The Process Queue contains a list of:

• Output and Effect nodes that have been added explicitly or that are currently processing.
• Active or past publication actions (see Chapter 10 - Collaboration Tools for more information on Publishing). When using the Publish function, initially the queue will show the H264 render of the publication and once that is done, the upload progress is shown.
• Any Background Processing Jobs that have been started. While Output / Effect nodes and Publish actions are all local current project processing items - a background jobs can originate from any project.

The queue is always sorted per Construct; for efficiency reasons nodes from the same Construct are processed in parallel so that an image from the Timeline in the Construct is not loaded more often than necessary. In case the processing of one node was started earlier than the processing of a second node, the processing of the former might hold until the second caught up. SCRATCH can process multiple nodes at the same time but will always group them per Construct and process Constructs after each other. You can determine the order of the Constructs though.

Nodes, once added to the queue, are never automatically removed - even when finished. That way you have a render / processing log. You can however manually remove items from the list to clean it up.

QUEUE GRID

The data grid has the following columns.

NAME

The first column shows the name of the Output or Effect node.

FORMAT

The second column of the queue grid shows the resolution and format of the underlying clip or node.

RANGE

The third column shows the range within the node that is to be processed; start frame and ending frame. Theoretically a node can appear more than once in the list with different ranges.

STATUS

The status column can contain different types of information, depending on the user settings and the state of the node.

• Idle: The node is present in the queue but neither processing or scheduled to be processed
• Waiting: Node is waiting to be processed after SCRATCH has finished processing the nodes currently processing.
• Processing: Node is being processed. The column will show a progress indicator and the progress in either percentage, frames or time, depending on the user setting.
• Finished: Node was processed. The node will not be processed again automatically unless the output is either deleted or invalidated. If the underlying media is invalidated, the status of the node will switch to idle.
• Error: When an error occurs in a sequential output node (such as a QuickTime) the processing is stopped and the status turns to error. If a non-fatal error occurs during processing, processing will continue but the status will be shown in red. You can find error message is available in the error log.

FREE SPACE

This column will indicate the amount of free disk space that will be left after the node has been processed (assuming the order of nodes top to bottom). This will give you an indication of running out of disk space. Note that the disk space used is an estimates! The required disk space for a node is calculated based on a standard dpx-10 bit output - even when the node is of a different format. For most compressed formats SCRATCH is unable to calculate the disk space required on forehand.

If the estimated amount exceeds the current available free disk space - the column will show 'low' in red.

PATH

The last column in the grid shows the output folder the frames are rendered to.

QUEUE CONTROLS

The bottom part of the Process Queue dialog holds a number of controls to manage the queue.

START

This button will start processing the entire queue. This means SCRATCH will start at the top of the list and check each node's status and process it if needed. Nodes that are already processing the moment the button is pressed, will hold until it is their turn again.

STOP

This button will stop processing the queue. Any nodes currently processing will stop.

TIMER

You can also set time for SCRATCH to start processing. Before selecting the Timer button, first set the hour and minute in the controls below. When the Timer button is enabled SCRATCH will wait for the set time and then start processing as if you pressed the Start button.

Note: You should not exit SCRATCH or the current project for the timer to work.

MOVE UP AND DOWN

With these buttons you can alter the order in which SCRATCH processes the queue. You can only change the order of the Constructs, not the individual nodes. To move a Construct select the Construct's row in the grid and click the Up- or Down- button.

REMOVE FROM QUEUE

This button will remove the selected nodes from the queue. The nodes are not removed from the project.

PROCESS

This will start the processing of all the selected nodes in the grid.The same order of processing and waiting applies as before but only the selected nodes are put in the waiting/process status, not the entire queue.

ABORT

This button will stop the processing of only the selected nodes.

INVALIDATE

This button will invalidate the underlying media of all selected nodes. This means that the nodes are ready for processing again and the underlying media will be overwritten if the node is processed.

VALIDATE MEDIA

This will do a check whether all file references of the media underlying the current selected queue are valid and there are no missing files; media, audio or LUTs. You can automate this check if needed in the Advanced System setting. Then every time you click Process (in the Process Queue, in the Construct or in the Player) the validation process is performed. Note though that this process might be lengthy procedure in itself, extending the time it takes to complete the actual render.

STATUS

With this Options List you can control what status information is shown in the Status column of the Grid when a node is processing; Time, Percentage or Frames.

ERROR LOG

This button will pop up the error log panel showing if and what error occurred. Use this function if a node indicates an error status. All errors are also logged to the main SCRATCH error log.

PLAY

With this button you can open the selected node in the Player.

CREATE VERSION

If processed frames exist for the selected node, then clicking on the Create Version button will load the processed frames as a new shot and clear the selected node’s cache. The new version is attached to the cursor so you can place it in any Construct within the Project. This is a quick way to perform a ‘mix down’ of the Construct to a single shot before making additional changes.

The Create Version function creates a new root-folder for the shot and adds a post fix version number-increment to the folder-name (V1, V2... , Vn). All rendered media is moved to this folder. In case the media was rendered directly into the project's main render folder, a new subVn folder is created inside the render folder. If the rendered media is made up of one single file or file sequence, SCRATCH loads a single node. In case the media was rendered into different file sequences (over multiple folders), SCRATCH will load each of the shots and create a Collector node to hold them together.

OPEN FOLDER

Open a file explorer window to the output folder of the current selected process queue item.

CLOSE

This button will close the Process Queue dialog.