Movie Render Queue Settings Reference

Reference guide for High-Quality Media Export UI and settings.

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You can add a variety of settings to jobs and queues in the Movie Render Queue to modify how the executor processes them. These includes additional rendering processes like anti-aliasing or color output adjustments, console commands you want to apply for the duration of the render, and more.

You can choose which settings you want to add in the Movie Render Queue's Settings window by by clicking the + Setting dropdown menu and selecting your desired setting. All settings options are listed under the Settings group.

Click image to enlarge.

Click any of these to add them to the Settings list. Once added, you can enable and disable them using the toggle switch, and you can select them to customize their properties, if available.

SettingAndToggleSwitch.png

Available Settings Options

The following settings are available:

Anti-Aliasing

Anti-aliasing controls the number of samples used to produce a final frame. The Movie Render Queue adds the ability to combine multiple renders together to produce a final frame. This significantly increases the quality of anti-aliasing, motion blur and can decrease noise from raytracing. There are two types of sampling that produce the final frame: spatial and temporal.

Temporal sampling takes the time the camera shutter is open (based on the camera/post-processing Motion Blur Amount setting) and slices the frame into corresponding time slices. The engine then evaluates at the center of each time slice while using the standard engine motion blur to interpolate between each time slice. This enables rotational motion blur as the time period normally represented by a single directional motion blur is now represented through many small directional motion blurs. Because the engine is ticked (and by extension time passes in the world) these are called temporal samples. For each temporal sample, there are N many renders accumulated, where N is determined by the Spatial Sample Count variable. Using too many temporal samples will create too small of a delta time for the engine to handle and will result in warnings after a render.

Spatial sampling takes each sample that is going to be rendered and renders it multiple times, each time jittering the camera a little bit. This is useful for renders where you have a very short motion blur duration and still need more samples to increase anti-aliasing or reduce noise.

Any combination of spatial and temporal sampling produces the same pattern of offsets used for anti-aliasing. This means that it is generally more efficient to put your samples into temporal sampling instead of spatial, since non-moving objects will receive the same anti-aliasing, and moving objects will be blurred, hiding the aliasing.

anti-aliasing settings

Property

Description

Spatial Sample Count

Determines how many accumulated renders are in each Temporal Sample.

Temporal Spatial Count

Determines how many time intervals each frame is divided into.

Override Anti-Aliasing

Enables you to choose a different anti-aliasing method using the Anti-Aliasing Method property.

Anti Aliasing Method

When Override Anti-Aliasing is enabled, this field will select the desired anti-aliasing method. None will disable the anti-aliasing entirely. This is often desirable when using more than 8 temporal/spatial samples as this will match the quality provided by the default anti-aliasing without any of the downsides.

Render Warm Up Frames

If this setting is enabled, Movie Render Queue will render each Engine Warm Up frame. This is disabled by default for improved performance, but must be enabled if your content must be rendered to properly warm up, such as gpu particles or virtual texturing.

Render Warm Up Count

Controls the number of samples used to build the temporal history before rendering begins. When a camera cut or shot occurs, the temporal history used by TAA is cleared to prevent "ghosts" from the previous camera angle appearing. To allow anti-aliasing on the first frame, this history must be rebuilt. All samples are taken at the same time without ticking the engine between them.

Engine Warm Up Count

Indicates the number of frames to run the engine for before rendering begins. These frames are not submitted to the GPU (unless Render Warm Up Frames is enabled) and are relatively fast to run. Typically, the warmup is useful for when you need time for cloth physics, particles, or other dynamics to settle into the right position before rendering starts.

Use Camera Cut for Warm Up

When this setting is enabled, the excess range of a camera cut track will be used to determine how many engine warm up frames are used. When this setting is disabled the system will emulate motion blur for the first frame by using the delta to the second frame. When enabled, the frames will actually be evaluated in Sequencer. This can be used to solve issues with cloth and particles that follow an object; when emulating motion blur the warm-up frames are all evaluated on the first frame and no motion exists. By providing data before the shot starts (such as the character animating) these will be evaluated which will cause cloth to trail behind the character as expected.

Anti-Aliasing Methods

You can override anti-aliasing using the following methods:

| Anti-Aliasing Method | Description | | None | Disables anti-aliasing. Recommended if you are using 8 or more spatial/temporal samples. | | FXAA | Uses Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing. This smooths jagged pixels in screen-space rather than using data from the 3D meshes in the world, which is faster than TAA or MSAA, but less precise for fine details. | | TemporalAA | Uses Temporal Anti-Aliasing. This is the default algorithm for motion blur used in Unreal Engine which uses the information from previous frames to anti-alias the current frame. May cause ghosting, especially when a moving object is in front of a noisy background. | | MSAA | Not supported. |

You can use Spatial and Temporal sampling with TAA to experiment with anti-aliasing results, though it is not recommended in most cases. If TAA is enabled then there is a limit on how many unique positions are chosen for anti-aliasing. This limit is defined by r.TemporalAASamples , which defaults to 8. If TAA is enabled and you have more than 8 samples, we recommend enabling Override Anti-Aliasing and set it to None to disable TAA, or increasing r.TemporalAASamples to match (Spatial Count * Temporal Count).

If you use a Temporal Sample Count higher than 1, the sequence will be evaluated on either side of the frame. This means that you will need to extend your tracks in Sequencer to cover the time one frame before the start of your sequence, otherwise there will be no data to sample. You can tell that you did not extend the data when you see that the first frame of the output is smeared or half one image and half another.

example of anti-aliasing and motion blur

Example of anti-aliasing and motion blur.

Burn-In

The Burn In option determines whether to use the default burn in or a custom burn in. You can use the Burn in Class to implement your own UMG Widget to use as a burn in that will be composited later on top of the final image.

The default burn-in provides information about when the file was rendered, what sequence was rendered, who rendered it as well as per-frame information such as which frame this is in the master sequence and the current sequence.

burn in class setting

Camera

The Camera setting changes the shutter and affects how motion blur is presented.

burn in class setting

As of 4.26, this setting only features Shutter Timing , which changes the timing of the shutter angle. Otherwise, it respects the settings of the cinematic camera used in the sequence. The following settings are available for the shutter timing:

Shutter Timing Value

Description

Frame Open

The frame number represents the shutter opening, so the data represented is what comes after the frame number in Sequencer.

Frame Center

The data is centered around the frame number in Sequencer, and samples will be taken both before and after.

Frame Close

The frame number represents the shutter closing, so the data represented is what comes before the frame number in Sequencer.

Color Output (OCIO)

The Color Output setting overrides the default color space settings with a custom Open Color IO (OCIO) configuration.

Color OCIO settings

Set the Is Enabled field to true to enable OCIO color conversion and disable the Tone Curve automatically. You can then set the Configuration Source to an OCIO configuration created in the content browser, and you can use the Source Color Space and Destination Color Space settings to convert from one color space to another.

The Disable Tone Curve setting enables you to manually disable the use of filmic tone curve even if you have not enabled OCIO. This option will be greyed out if Is Enabled is set to true. Disabling the tone curve makes it possible to output .exr files that store the linear data that comes from the Post Processing pipeline that will not be rescaled down to the [0-~1] range as is normally done for display.

For more information about OCIO configurations, refer to Color Management with OpenColorIO .

Console Variables

The Console Variables setting will change any console variables that you designate when the render begins. This is useful when trying to increase ray tracing sample counts or apply other quality settings that are too expensive for real time preview in the Editor.

console command settings

Any console variables in the Console Variables list will be set to your designated value when your movie render starts. The original value from before the render is cached, and when the render finishes, the console variable will be restored to that cached value. Each entry in the list is a key-value pair consisting of the name of the console variable and the value you want to set it to.

The Start Console Command and End Console Commands list will execute the provided console command before the render starts, and after the render ends. This can be used for running console commands that are not variables, such as executing custom events. The console commands are run before the sequence is first evaluated so you may need to work around this by implementing a Custom Event on an actor in the level/level Blueprint and then using "ke * MyCustomEventName" in the Start Console Commands list. You can then use a **delay** node within the Blueprint to delay it for a frame until the sequence has been evaluated once.

Game Overrides

Game Overrides change several common game-related settings, such as Game Mode and Cinematic Quality settings. This is useful if the game's normal mode displays UI elements or loading screens that you do not want captured.

game override settings

Setting

Description

Game

Game Mode Override

Overrides the map�s default game mode with another game mode. This is useful if the game�s normal mode displays a UI or loading screen you do not want captured.

Cinematic Quality Settings

Automatically applies the Cinematic level in the Engine Scalability Settings.

Rendering

Texture Streaming

Determines when to load textures in each frame.

  • Fully Load Used Textures : When a texture is first requested all mip levels are loaded into memory at once, regardless of which mip is used. Requires less VRAM than Disable Streaming, but may result in blurry textures for objects that spawn mid-render.

  • Disable Streaming : Disables texture streaming. Requires higher VRAM limits but can solve blurry textures that load in over time.

  • Don't Override : Does not change the game's settings. The engine default is to use texture streaming. If the allocated Texture Streaming pool is not large enough then textures will never fully resolve. Additional Docs

Use LODZero

Enables default, high-quality settings for meshes and particle systems, regardless of distance.

Disable HLODs

Disables Hierarchal LODS to use real meshes, regardless of distance.

Use High Quality Shadows

Enables some common shadow related settings to increase quality in renders.

Shadow Distance Scale

Multiplies the distance at which a shadow is visible on an object. Higher values mean shadows are visible for more distant objects.

Shadow Radius Threshold

Overrides the minimum on-screen size required for an object to cast shadows. Smaller values mean smaller objects will cast shadows.

Override View Distance Scale

Overrides the View Distance Scale for objects. Useful when the Max Draw Distance is already set to a certain value to improve in-game performance.

View Distance Scale

Sets the value for the scale if you override the default View Distance Scale.

High Resolution

The High Resolution settings enable you to use tiled renders to produce larger images than would be normally possible due to maximum texture sizes or memory limits on GPUs. Under High Resolution, you can adjust the Tile Count, Overlap Ratio, and Texture Sharpness Bias.

high resolution settings

Setting

Description

Tile Count

Sets the number of tiles the image breaks into while rendering. For example, a 7680x4320 Output Resolution with 4 tiles will render each tile at 1920x1080.

Texture Sharpness Bias

Biases the texture mip mapping to pick a higher resolution texture when it might normally not. A more negative number means the bias is more likely to select a higher detailed mipmap than it normally would, but, if the value is too high, it can cause a grainy image. The bias has no effect on textures that are already displaying their highest quality mipmap.

Overlap Ratio

Controls how much each tile overlaps each other. This means a value of 0.1 will cause a 10% overlap between the images that are blended together. This is particularly useful for Depth of Field, which normally produces a different result near the edges of images. Increasing the ratio results in longer renders but can help in situations where seams are still visible between tiles.

Override Sub Surface Scattering

Overrides existing subsurface scattering settings.

Burley Sample Count

Value of surface scattering across tiles if Override Sub Surface Scattering is enabled.

Write All Samples

Writes all samples that compose an output frame to disk individually. This is useful for debugging purposes.

Visual example of how the tile count works. Click image for full size.

Currently, High Resolution does not support temporal anti-aliasing and some rendering features which rely on screen space effects. This includes screen space reflections, convolution bloom, lens flares and motion blur on very fast moving objects.

Adjusting your Output Settings

The Output Setting controls most of the settings related to the sequence�s render.

settings panel

Setting

Description

File Output

Output Directory

Designates the file directory where the export saves.

File Name Format

Determines the file name format given to the export.

Output Resolution

Determines the export resolution.

Use Custom Frame Rate

Enables you to use a custom frame rate different than the one in the Level Sequence.

Output Frame Rate

Determines the new framerate if you enabled Use Custom Frame Rate.

Override Existing Output

Enables you to automatically overwrite any files with the same file name. If disabled, an integer, such as 1, will be appended to the file name.

Zero Pad Frame Numbers

Determines how many numbers to pad the output frame numbers. This is useful for exporting to software that has difficulty recognizing frame ranges.

Frame Number Offset

Adds a specified number to the frame numbers when writing to the disk during rendering. This allows you to offset issues regarding negative numbers for labeling frames, which confuses most software. So, instead of writing -2, -1, 0, 1 to the disk, you can write out 98, 99, 100, 101 by setting the Frame Number Offset to 100.

Frames

Handle Frame Count

Determines number of Frame Handles to include for each shot.

Output Frame Step

Determines value for rendering every Nth frame. For example, setting the value to 2 sets the rendering to every other frame. For the frames that are skipped, the game will still tick to make the results between rendering every frame and every Nth frame more consistent. Some image quality differences will be visible (due to a different temporal history), but this option should allow for draft type renders if needed.

Use Custom Playback Range

Enables you to designate a custom playback range.

Custom Start Frame

Determines the frame start if you enabled Custom Playback Range.

Custom End Frame

Determines the frame end if you enabled Custom Playback Range. A start frame of 0 and an end frame of 1 will produce only one frame.

Versioning

Version Number

If Auto Version is disabled, the value in this field will be appended as the version number for the render output.

Auto Version

If enabled, Movie Render Queue will check the most recent version number from the last render in the output directory, increment it by 1, then use that value for the next render's version number.

Format String Information

The bottom of the Output Settings contains a text box with a list of format string information.

FormatStringInfo.png

Any information in this panel can be referenced in the file name format field. For example, you could set the file name format to the following:

{sequence_name}_{level_name}_{date}_{frame_number}

The result for this example, using the ArchViz sample scene, would be Archviz_cine_MASTER_ArchVis_RT_2020.11.15_1 , with the final digit being substituted with the appropriate frame number.

You should always include one of the following entries in your file name format to distinguish which frames are which:

  • {frame_number}

  • {frame_number_rel}

  • {frame_number_shot}

  • {frame_number_shot_rel}

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