Power Down Protection.

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

I guess this is not an issue for the States, but here electricity stops often enough. Without warning or compensation.

Rendering takes a while, even with a really powerful computer. With RED footage it will be even more.

I was rendering something small once, but it took nearly 2 days. The power went down near the end of rendering and I wanted to eat someone.

Are there any serious protection options. UPS is not good enough cause it can't give you more than 30-40 mins.

So, what if the power goes down? What do you do?

 

[Joel Kaye]

Are there any serious protection options. UPS is not good enough cause it can't give you more than 30-40 mins.

Have a generator on hand and plug the UPS into that if power goes down.

Or extend the time of your UPS with a bunch of car batteries:

http://www.dansdata.com/images/carbatt_ups/carbatt1280.jpg
http://www.dansdata.com/upsupgrade.htm

Ideally the software would save work in progress - a frame at a time - so if power is lost you only lose the current frame.

 

[Brent J. Craig]

You can get UPS's that will run systems for days.

Make sure you are only powering what you need - just the CPU and drives. No need to waste batteries on a monitor!

 

[Chris Nuzzaco]

You can get UPS's that will run systems for days.

Make sure you are only powering what you need - just the CPU and drives. No need to waste batteries on a monitor!

How are you going to see what you're doing if you don't have a monitor? :bleh:

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Thanks, guys.

Gotta look for those longer-lasting UPS options. I guess they're more specific, cause the firms I called didn't offer them.

Maybe I could briefly turn the monitor on, just to check how the meal is cooking, and then turn it back off.

 

[Brent J. Craig]

How are you going to see what you're doing if you don't have a monitor? :bleh:

Losing power is kind of an emergency situation. It makes sense to keep your computer running and working on whatever it was when the power went down. Using a monitor sort of implies that you want to be able to start new work while on emergency power, which I wouldn't recommend.

Good UPS's let you specify a graceful shutdown procedure as well for when they reach the end of their battery power, so you don't even need a monitor for that.

If I had the choice of longer runtime or powering a screen I would go for the longer runtime.