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Multiprocessing disabled – limited to just precomp?
Hi all (mainly Todd if you’re about?)
I’m having more problems with multiprocessing being ‘rendered’ useless in my project and I’m trying to fully understand the rules/laws of AE’s management of when it disables multiproc…
Basically I have a giant project, which is 30+ minutes long. The main comp I am rendering has no effects applied DIRECTLY in it, however some of the nested comps (or rather comps nested within other comps) do have some temporal effects. (Twitch, pixel motion, twixtor)
What I want to know is, if I know roughly where the offending effects are and I position my work areas so as not to include these for my multi-proc renders, should AE render these non-offending parts of my comp with MP switched on? i.e: does it switch off if there are any of these effects present ANYWHERE in my main or nested comps, or should it only switch off if it needs to actually render those parts?
I hope that makes sense! I can’t seem to find a way of getting around this and I’m having to resort to pinching everyone’s workstations on skip frames to get this job done, when I should be only using 8 processors on ONE workstation! Not good for productivity..
The thing that bugs me the most about this is that in AE7 using Nucleo this very same project would whizz through like butter on all procs and now that I have used CS4 to update it I can’t go back and it’s at a crawl.
HELP!
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5 Replies
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I’d consider making lossless proxies of your precomps (or pre-rendering them) which contain non-multiprocessing effects. It will use a single processor to create the proxy, but previews and subsequent renders will be able to use the footage instead of re-rendering each frame. Make sure to enable proxy use in the render settings of subsequent renders.
Also, Nucleo Pro 2 supports CS4 now, if you wanted to use it.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Hi Walter,
Thanks for your suggestions. That could well work in some cases, but the resolution is 7000 x 800 and multiple RGB+A TGA sequences stacked up in a half hour comp would be a huge amount of data to store/move around. I’m not sure how much time it would save me either tbh. Hey ho!
I just hope the next version of AE has a more intelligent rendering engine (ROI still doesn’t seem to make any difference to preview time in most cases either)
Nucleo 2 I might d/load a demo of though and see if that will do it..shouldn’t have to pay for several licences of a 3rd party renderer something as simple as this though!
I do like to whinge on occasion.
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[Jimmy Brunger] “Thanks for your suggestions. That could well work in some cases, but the resolution is 7000 x 800 and multiple RGB+A TGA sequences stacked up in a half hour comp would be a huge amount of data to store/move around. I’m not sure how much time it would save me either tbh. Hey ho! “
I do a lot of ultra-widescreen projects at similar resolutions, and you’re right — the data requirements for proxies are huge, both in terms of size and speed. I bought a big RAID array specifically for a proxy-based workflow.
Just like you, I’m looking forward to AE CS5…
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
> does it switch off if there are any of these effects present ANYWHERE in my main or nested comps…?
Yes.
That’s why this sentence is phrased in terms of what the composition contains:
“If a composition uses any of the following effects, the composition will not be rendered with the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing feature…” (from After Effects Help)———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment. -
OK, thanks Todd. I guess we’re going to have to buy some more workstations, AE licences and plugins sharpish then if Nucleo 2 doesn’t work! EEEk!
I for one can’t wait for CS5 – bring it!
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