Film progress and recovery
The first-film walkthrough covers making a film.
This page covers a slow, failed or interrupted job. Run the commands inside the app container,
or directly on a native install; use docker compose exec -T immich-memories as the Docker prefix.
Progress and recovery
| Phase | What you see | Complete when |
|---|---|---|
| Image pull | docker compose pull layer progress in the terminal | Pull exits successfully; docker compose up -d starts the app |
| Model preparation | Download models in the app, or models fetch in the CLI | Download finishes; GPU/Full also pass required service checks in preflight |
| Input preparation and cut | Memory page stage, picture counts and elapsed time | The page opens the saved run (“The cut is ready.” may flash by first) |
| Review | Shots, Pool and saved revisions on the run page | You select the revision you intend to render |
| Render | Render progress on the run page | “The film is ready.”, player and Download film |
Use docker compose logs --tail=100 immich-memories for server/startup errors. Generation
runs as a separate job: use its progress/error panel and the run's Copy report, or
immich-memories report RUN_ID, for run diagnostics. A first job may have only a stage estimate.
The measurements separate warm tests from cold preparation and rendering;
no fixed first-film time is promised. A real month's first preparation can take hours on a NAS.
A percentage labelled of this stage covers only the named pass. Sampling video frames can reach 100%, then frame checks start at zero. Regular videos and Live Photo clips have separate passes. Counts name their unit: pictures, clips or checks. One picture can need several checks. Previous stages keeps the most recent passes across a reload. Processed counts inputs visited, including inputs a check could not read; it does not mean every check succeeded.
Saved picture checks are reused when they still match the source. Work the selected tier does not request is labelled that way. Selection can bring in more pictures and start another preparation pass, so there is no fixed number of stages left.
Both the CLI and browser list the phases: preparation, selection, clip preparation, rendering,
music, playback checking and upload, as applicable. Each shows whether it is pending, running,
completed or skipped, with its elapsed time and estimated time left. A browser cut ends when the
cut is saved. A full CLI generate includes the later render phases from the start.
Stage time estimates use results from that pass. About … until the film is ready includes all remaining phases, including playback checking and upload if requested. It combines this run’s measured rate with timings from completed runs with matching tier and output settings. It is an estimate: cache reuse, service queues and changes in the pictures can change it. An unexpected pass or a phase that outlasts its reference makes that part unknown instead of counting down to zero.
The first run can estimate work too. If 100 of 1,000 pictures take 30 seconds, that pass has about 4½ minutes left at its current rate. The summary adds this to any estimates for later work. When some costs are still unknown, it shows About … of estimated work left and names the phases with additional unestimated work. The rate resets when the producer or pass changes; preview download speed does not predict model inference time. Fixed render and music percentages do not count as measured work. A worker download can show a stage percentage when the server supplies the file size. Otherwise it reports bytes received.
A quiet stage shows how long it has gone without a progress update. The CLI heartbeat says process alive; no new progress: a live process can still be waiting for a model or service. A heartbeat does not count as completed work. Music status identifies its candidate; a retry or another candidate is more work, even if the preceding candidate reached its last step.
If live updates disconnect, the page says so and checks the saved job status. Returning to a background tab also refreshes it. An expired app login asks you to sign in again; it does not mean the film failed. Reconnect or reload to read the saved result before starting another job.
Press Cancel on an active job to cancel it; cancellation can wait for active native work. Cancelling marks the run Cancelled and clears its scratch folder; the saved cut stays, so Render again still works. Reloading the browser does not cancel it. Return to Memory for the active cut or Runs for its saved cut/render. Restarting the app/container does not resume a vanished job: the run shows as Interrupted after the next start. Rerun Cut if no cut was saved, or render the saved revision again. Compatible picture facts remain cached. Keep the store and run files.
| Problem | Diagnostic and next action |
|---|---|
| Immich unreachable or key rejected | Run preflight; correct the container-reachable URL and read permissions in .env, then docker compose up -d |
| Missing or wrong model pin | Run models fetch again, then preflight; see offline preparation if downloads are blocked |
| “Storage is full or its quota is exhausted” | The job panel and the CLI say this when the cache, output or database volume is full. Expand that volume or clear disposable caches while the app is idle, then retry. Don't delete the store or the whole data volume |
| A render stops and names the shots it lost | A prepared clip vanished before assembly, so the run stops instead of rendering a shorter film. Render the saved cut again |
| Output not writable | Fix UID/GID ownership of this project's output using the NAS permissions recipe, then preflight |
| Memory pressure or exit 137 | Check docker stats --no-stream and container state; keep Basic/1080p and give this app its own 4 GiB budget; see render budgets |
| The cut hangs on thumbnails while preflight is green | The host's network MTU is below Docker's: set a lower Compose network MTU |
| A cut fails with “cannot reach” your Immich | A busy or shared Immich can drop connections for several minutes in the middle of preparation. What the cut already prepared is kept: run the same command again and it fetches only what is missing. A month on a shared Immich failed after 10 minutes this way and finished on the immediate rerun, fetching 159 missing previews |
| Interrupted work | Inspect the job error and saved run, then retry Cut or Render as above; diagnostics explains logs and reports |
For a deliberate fresh trial or uninstall, use the scoped lifecycle procedures. They are separate from retrying an interrupted film.
Find the finished film
Open the render run under Runs. Download film is below the player; Download report is the diagnostic bundle. Rendering creates its own run, separate from the cut you rendered. Each run's film is in its own folder beneath the configured output directory.
A successful upload removes the local copy. Local-only and failed deliveries keep theirs. Output and rendering documents naming and storage; Kubernetes file transfer covers copying from a pod when a browser download is unsuitable.