-
Render Time After Restart
Can anyone tell me what’s happening when my render time radically declines after I restart my machine?
For example: this morning when I started a render, AE told me it would take 10 hours. When I came back after 5 hours, it said 20 hours remained and seemed to be rendering rather slowly. However, when I restarted the machine, the pace seemed to quicken and the predicted time lowered to 5 hours again.
I’m using CS4 on an 8 core 2.6 G5 with 16gigs of RAM. CS4 is using 6 cores. I’ve got my application on my main drive, disk cache on an external Firewire 800 drive, and am rendering to a separate Firewire 800 drive.
-
3 Replies
-
What do you see in Activity Monitor as the render progresses in the CPU usage and system memory usage tabs?
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 -
In the Activity Monitor I see six cores alternately using between 0 & 135% of the CPU.
I may be imagining it, but it feels as if big renders start like a bullet and then bog down over time, regardless of the content. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a delusion, however–that’s what happens when you stare at a little yellow bar for 10 hours.
-
[matt kresling] “In the Activity Monitor I see six cores alternately using between 0 & 135% of the CPU.”
What about RAM usage?
[matt kresling] “I may be imagining it, but it feels as if big renders start like a bullet and then bog down over time, regardless of the content. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a delusion, however–that’s what happens when you stare at a little yellow bar for 10 hours. “
Many of my projects build over time, so the beginning may start out simply, but the middle or the end has a lot going on — more layers, more effects, more particles, more moblur. The render time estimate doesn’t take this variable complexity into account. From the best I can tell, it estimates the render as if each frame remaining will take as long to render as the last completed frame did.
But Dave’s point is right on — the content DOES matter. AE is really built for intraframe media; if you use any interframe-compressed media, you’ll get all kinds of unexpected results. What sort of footage are you using?
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
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up