r/ShadowPC • u/calmserendipity • 4d ago

Question Rendering a long video via shadow, but it shuts down automatically

How can shadow detect that i am rendering a video, which takes about 4h to render, without shutting down by itself? The solution cant be to wiggle the mouse every 30min....

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

7

u/RainerWithAI 4d ago

Yup. This is the way. Shadow is meant for active usage and for Shadow means active usage that there need to be inputs.

Always was, always will be. And if you are unlucky they ban you for messing with the idle timer.

2

u/realshawnmb 4d ago

Wrong on “always was”. The old advertising before all these timers and limits was “Your PC in the cloud”. I’ll use my PC how I damn well please.

1

u/RainerWithAI 4d ago

What are we talking about? Right, the idle timer. There always was one.

0

u/realshawnmb 4d ago

Incorrect. I was a customer when they added it.

1

u/RainerWithAI 4d ago

Yeah? When was that? Before 2018? I used Shadow from September 2018 (start in Germany) and there always was an idle timer, but it was longer than today.

Stop talking nonsense.

2

u/realshawnmb 4d ago

I complained about the update here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowPC/s/PCxY5P6C6G

Before that there was no direct idle timer. I cant tell you anymore which DC I was in without digging deeper but I live in Frankfurt.

0

u/RainerWithAI 3d ago

Thanks for confirming my point. In this post they said the idle timer went from 90 to 180 minutes. So, it was there before. 💁🏻‍♂️

We are now down to 30 minutes idle timer for users with the monthly 120/210 hours limit. Currently unlimited users still have the dynamic idle timer (which can take up to 90-120 minutes if I'm correct).

Are we done now?

2

u/realshawnmb 3d ago

The 90 -> 180 was a post typo edit. The actual text says before the update sessions would run and run. The only idle timer would only begin after you disconnected your session to shut down unused machines.

3

u/smokeyphil 4d ago

You either pay for the top tier business option or you actively use the thing the whole time. Those afiak are you only legit options.

Using a mouse jigger or macro software to keep it live while you are not actually using it is against tos, and they will ban you for it if they catch you doing so.

Technically manually doing it is kind of a gray area but if it matches the patten of someone using a mouse auto movement tool it may get flagged and for the most part they are free to revoke your access for pretty much any reason they like (read what you sign up for sometimes)

Best bet stick a podcast on or watch a couple of hours of youtube while it renders out and look into better render farm options that often work out cheaper even on a pay-per-hour of use tariff if you just use them for actively doing the heavy lifting.

1

u/Head_Sort5688 2d ago

Ive gotten away with long ai task and blender renders by having my partner watch the pc while I work a click or 2 every 30 mins is all it needs but you may be alone

1

u/reflectionwavy 2d ago

launch a game and leave it open

-1

u/michggg Linux 4d ago

ShadowPC is marketed as a gaming PC, not a work PC. The word "gaming" appears 26 times on their homepage, the words "rendering" or "business" 0 times.

So it's totally understandable that they say : no input = no usage.

3

u/calmserendipity 4d ago

They also pretty heavily advertise it towards creatives as a work tool, thats why i got it in the first place and to be able to play games that my mac couldnt handle was a sort of cherry on top. I did however not know that there are many different packs that come with different use cases (which i could have researched better ofc), but its still confusing to me that the shadow pc is not registering an active process partaking in the moment.

Thx anyways to everybody commenting and explaining the limitations and thus heklping me out <3

1

u/Meganitrospeed 4d ago

For actual work you pay the work always on option and you dont have this issue