nuke crashing... ?

[Indiefly]

Hi i've been having issues with nuke crashing on me way to frequently lately. like every time i try to zoom in the viewer or when i try to write out the composite.

when i try to write out a .mov it goes through all the frames and then crashes when its finalizing the .mov , and when i write out .tga or some other picture format it does the same there and writes out all the images properly and then crashes.

i'm using nuke 4.7 v4 on a pretty decent 4 gig ram pc and the script isn't that heavy either so i'm not sure what to go though to fix this problem?

getting a message in the dos windows saying that the codecs aren't initialized properly so i reckon that has something to do with the write node issues of mine, but how to fix it?

thanks in advance folks,

/Nick

[ZombieDUG]

We've been testing it out here over the past few days and have been running into the same problem. I talked to the Foundry guys about it and they said that "this is the most stable version of Nuke so far", so it makes me a little worried. But I've said it before and I'll say it again, hopefully Nuke 5 will fix all of these woes...

[Indiefly]

yeah I've been playing around with nuke a since a few versions back now anyway and I've never had any instability problems with the viewer before, so this is a bit worrying since i have to hand in a comp assignment in about 5 days. hehe.

[nathan]

Does this happen every time you execute a Write node or just when specific file formats are used like .mov, tga, etc?

[Indiefly]

it happens with every write node at the moment. I've been putting out both .mov and .exr from the same script a few days ago, added a few grades and idistort to the comp and now its just crashing outputting whatever.

[nathan]

Hmm. Has the Write node ever worked in 4.7v4 for you? Also have you tried using 4.7v3 on the script?

I'm a little occupied at the moment but later on I'll hook up my Windows hard drive and reboot to see if I have the same problem with Nuke in Windows.

[Indiefly]

oh yeah, been outputting some test comps with the 4.7 v4 with no worries a few days ago, then i made a lil messup with my renderings and they all came out as .iff. loaded them into nuke and did some work, and thats when it started crashing. I realized that it was some problem with the memory usage so i rendered them out again as .exr. and now its not complaining about the memory but still crashing.

tried to do a new script just to write them out as .exr´s but it didn't even manage to write a stream of 360 frames of half HD out without crashing.


tried to load it up in 4.7 v3 but it crashes as soon as i load the script, I have a viewer open in the script and if i time the tap of the esc button i manage to open the script once in a while but still crash when i try to write anything out.

really sweet u people taking the time to help me out anyway!
cheers

[nathan]

Can you create a empty scene and render out a checkerboard or colorbars sequence without it crashing? Just trying to see if maybe some parameter in your script is causing the renderer to barf.

You can also stop it from loading the viewers of saved scripts in your preferences. Its under the Windows tab in the Preferences window. The check box is called "re-open viewers when loading saved scripts".

ZombieDUG what issues have you been having, the same as Indiefly or seperate ones? Could you explain a little more please? I don't doubt that you are having problems but ever since 4.7v3 Nuke has been pretty rock solid for me. It's unfortunate the same can't be said for you.

[Indiefly]

hooked up 2 write nodes (a .mov and .exr) to a 2k colorbar and it renders out nicely, so it should have something to do with my script.
its still saying

"warning: Write.codec was not initialized correctly"

in the dos window, but doesn't seem to mess anything up this time.

so how to go about locating the error in my script? should i go around hooking up a write node further and further downstream and see when it start crashing?

[nathan]

Ok thats a little more information. Try rendering just an EXR sequence or some other file format and see if that error is displayed. If not then try a Quicktime mov file and again check to see if the error is produced.

If only the Quicktime render produces the error you now know where the problem is and can inform support about the issue. I wouldn't be surprised if it is Quicktime either.

You could try rendering higher up the tree and gradually work your way down to find out where the problem starts at. Again once you find out where the problem occurs you have a good starting point for emailing support.

Try doing what I first suggested with just a Colorbars node. Then after that you can try the problematic script and get more information.

[Indiefly]

did the colorbars test and it work sweet with the .exr and some other file formats, but as soon as i change the output path to an .mov the error message is added to the dos window so i'll pass that on to the support.

i'll start munching though the problematic script and post it here if i find the bad seed amongst the nodes.

Thanks for the help nrgy!

[Diogo Girondi]

Best thing to be done is to get in contact with The Foundry support and let them aware of your problem.

And welcome to the random world of bugs on Nuke for Windows. But regarding the viewer the only problem I had so far is the infamous "timeline lock" where your timeline gets stuck on a random frame and forces you to close and reopen the app to be able to change frames again. As for the mov writer I get problems now and then but closing and reopening the app also solves the problem.

But they are fixing most of them at each new update, so... no worries.

It's a really tough transition from a in-house app to a comercial one. The first releases of Nuke (4.1) I've played had severall internal things from DD, full of customizations that only worked there. Now try to picture how the source code was!

[nathan]

Awesome .

Since I'm running Linux I wasn't able to test and see if it was indeed Quicktime. Once I could of plugged in my Windows drive I would of been able to find out though.

"warning: Write.codec was not initialized correctly" I wonder if that is a Quicktime issue or if it is an error in Nuke's Quicktime writer. I don't keep up with Quicktime updates so I wonder if an update to Quicktime maybe causing the problem. While you're waiting for a reply from support you could try using a previous version of Quicktime to see if that solves the issue rendering Quicktime files. Just a thought.

[nathan]

The viewer can sometimes cause Nuke to barf if there is an error DG.

I get this a lot when I'm testing out ideas with plugins. Not because its Nukes fault its just when I'm testing something out the viewer immediately opening can cause some problems that are because I've not fully setup my node at the time.

If you have a viewer open with a script that contains errors I've often found that this will cause Nuke to puke its brains out. If you can open the script without having the viewer immediately start rendering it gives Nuke a chance to error out the node and not render. For some reason when the viewer opens with an errored script the node doesn't flag that it has an error and will seg fault Nuke immediately. This doesn't happen all the time but I do run into it from time to time. Most of the time its my fault though so I pay no attention to it. I have seen it without me being the cause of it though.

[Indiefly]

The infamous "timeline lock" ey? well i'm still waiting for that one. haha

tried out some early version of nuke as well, cant remember the release number, but u had to go into some text document and declare the image resolution of the images to be able to bring em in, yeah that and a few other things put me of nuke for a few years.

seemed like its was one of nukes grain nodes that messed it up, its rendering out exr´s with no issues now that I've wiped anyway, so the problem is halfway fixed! i will still need the grain on my cg though.. bummer.

its still not letting me use the viewer though, i can open it up no problem and it render the frame pretty quickly, but as soon as i try to zoom or pan with it, instant crash. and its still a really simple script.. around 30 nodes with 8 read nodes.