Render

The Render frame is for managing final rendering and exporting of your project. You can choose to either render a still frame, or render a video from your project.

Presets #

You can save a preset of your current render settings to use again later. Presets will save the

Resolution
Frame Rate
Format Settings
- Container (MP4, Quicktime, etc)
- Codec (NotchLC, Animation, etc)
- Quality
Colour space
Channel settings

You can also rename and remove the presets using the [rename icon] and [delete icon] icons.

Render Settings #

These properties control how the project will be rendered to disk.

Label	Description
Resolution	The pixel Width and Height of the render
Frame Rate	The number of frames displayed per second. Video only.
Common Formats	Quickly access commonly used resolution standards
Duration	How long to render for, measured in Minutes : Seconds : Hours. Some effects will need some time to build up, so either allow for extra time at the start or add a preroll time.
Preroll Time	Pre-render a time frame before the initial start time. This can help some effects which are dependant on previous frames, and allow lighting to pre-calculate for the first frame.

File Name	Set the file name the render will be saved with.
Folder	Set the folder the render will be saved to.
Version Tag	Automatically add a suffix to the end of the file name, to help with versioning and prevent files overwriting. - None, No tag will be added. - Numeric, A simple numerical count is added, which checks for previous files and increments for each re-render. - Date/Time, The current date and time of the render at initial render time are saved in the file name.

Format	The container the video will be renderered with. For more, see [Render Formats].
Codec	The codec the video will be renderered with. Video Only. For more, see [Render Formats].
Quality	Adjust the Quality settings for the codec. For more, see [Render Formats].

Refine Passes	Alter the refinemnet passes used to render. Defaults to that of the active renderer in the composition.

Output Colour Space	Set the output colour space for the render. For more, see our page on Colour Management.
Output Colour Channels	Set whether alpha is rendered or not.

Render Preview #

TBD

Render Queue #

The Render Queue allows you to render multiple items in sequence with the click of a button. You can add compositions to the render queue either through the RMB menu or by dragging into the panel.

Render Queue items are split into 3 categories:

Rendering, items which are actively being processed.
Awaiting, items which are in the Queue but haven’t rendered yet.
Done, items which have completed their renders.

Adding items to the Queue will always place them in the Awaiting category. You can the select them, and make any changes you see fit the the [Render Settings].

You can also mark select items to be skipped, hidden, or removed from the list entirely.

Filename Macros #

You can use macros to create unique output filenames. Each macro must be prefixed and postfixed with a % sign.

Notch supports the following variations:

Macro	Description
`%YYYYMMDD%`	YearMonthDay.
`%DDMMYYYY%`	DayMonthYear.
`%MMDDYYYY%`	MonthDayYear.
`%DATE%`	Equivalent to the DDMMYYYY macro.
`%TIME%`	The current system clock time.
`%HHMM%`	HoursMinutes.
`%HH%`	Hours.
`%HHMMSS%`	HoursMinutesSeconds.
`%V%`	Single-digit version id.
`%VV%`	Double-digit version id.
`%VVV%`	Triple-digit version id.
`%VERSION%`	Four-digit version id.
`%LAYERNAME%`	The name of the layer.
`%CAMERANAME%`	The name of the camera.

For example: filename_%YYYYMMDD%_export_%VVVV%.mov would translate to filename_20200125_export_0001.mov when saved to disk.

For the V, VV, VVV, or VERSION macros, if a file with the same name already exists the id is incremented by 1 until a free filename is found.

Command-line Transcode & Render Queue export #

Using command-line arguments, Notch Builder is able to transcode video files, image sequences and export the contents of a project’s render queue. When using command-line arguments, Notch Builder is run in batch mode and therefore does not show the application window. Logging information is outputted to the window running the batch process.

Command-line arguments (Required) #

Argument	Description
`-transcode`	Transcode an input video file from one format to another (default NotchLC, changed via the `-codec` argument).
`-renderqueue`	Render the entire render queue from the provided dfx project.

Command-line arguments (Optional) #

Argument	Description
`-outputwidth <width>`	Specify the output width for the resulting video file. e.g. `-outputwidth 1280`
`-outputheight <height>`	Specify the output height for the resulting video file. e.g. `-outputheight 1280`
`-outputfps <fps>`	Specify the output FPS for the resulting video file. e.g. `-outputfps 30`
`-outputalpha <alpha>`	Toggle the export of an alpha channel. e.g. `-outputalpha 1` (exports alpha channel), `-outputalpha 0` (no alpha channel). Default is `1`.
`-codec <codecname>`	Specify the codec to use for the resulting video file. See below table.

If the -codec argument is omitted, NotchLC (nclc) is used by default.

The following codecs are supported:

Codec	Description
h264	The resulting video file is encoded as H.264 using FFMPEG.
h265	The resulting video file is encoded as H.265 using FFMPEG.
hap	The resulting video file is encoded as hap1.
hapq	The resulting video file is encoded as hapq.
nclc NotchLC	The resulting video file is encoded as NotchLC

Examples #

Transcode an input video to NotchLC:

NotchRFX.exe -transcode "C:\input_video.mp4" "C:\output_video.mov" -codec "nclc"`

Transcode an image sequence to NotchLC:

NotchRFX.exe -transcode "C:\input_image00000.png" "C:\output_video.mov" -codec "nclc"`

Transcode an input video to h264 using a custom resolution:

NotchRFX.exe -transcode "C:\input_video.mp4" "C:\output_video.mp4" -codec "h264" -outputwidth 640 -outputheight 480`

Render the render queue:

NotchRFX.exe -renderqueue "C:\input_project.dfx"`