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cant seem to solve this issue
on a dual quad core 3.2ghz mac running 10.5.8 and AE CS4 16 gigs ram
I am running into horrible render problems with AE not starting a rendering. I have used AE for almost 20yrs and never had an issue this frustrating. I have pared the composition down to as few elements as possible… yet when I go to make a movie rendered simply to basic quicktime format… I get the spinning beach ball for a number of minutes if im lucky and then it renders… however… roughly 50% of the time or more it spins forever forcing me to restart ae…. ive eliminated third party plug ins almost entirely but the randomness of this leads me to think something else is up… I have plenty of free space on my 4 internal drives… and have tried a large variety of processor memory settings, including turning off MP all together… I am writing this only after WEEKS of this and lots of hands on troubleshooting… I am budgeting for my large and expensive switch to CS5.5 the new Mac OS etc… but it is not realistic just yet for me to transition… so that is not an option… no open gl settings… tried it with no other apps running… my ram previews seem relatively normal… the usual lag time as the mp loads up… but nothing out of the ordinary… sometimes ill go to bed and notice that it will have started rendering a few hours later… but that is inconsistent as well… ughhhh.. easily the most frustrated I have been in some time… Any ideas or tricks or tips are helpful… thanks
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com -
9 Replies
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Does it behave like this with all sorts of comps or only with some?
I run into similar issues when I had 3d layers and motion blur working at 2k. I had to pre-render some parts of my comp to be able to fianlly render the whole thing.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
hey Ted…. im fighting this thing right now… its an unusual size 1340 x 850 no current motion blur settings at all… no 3d layers either. I did what you did… in that I pre rendered all of the pre comps… pretty much nothing but layered footage with some levels and hue adjustments… nothing fancy… I even cleaned out my tower and am making sure its kept cool in case maybe my processors are running hot… im that lost… and with my experience… thats saying something. Its odd that ram previews seem to work and respond relatively normal…
I will try other sized comps… but im stuck with this one… luckily for me its a demo reel piece and not a client project or id be sunk… any more ideas from anyone would be appreciated… this is nuts…
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com -
also… as the spinning beach ball goes… I only have safari open… I try to go back to AE and it wont even let me select the app… I mouse click all over and the app is hung or frozen…. need to force quit…
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com -
Let’s see-
latest update to CS4?
new comp altogether in which you bring in all the rendered precomps and apply effects again- a pain, I know, but maybe…
Clear the cache
re-install AE…
That’s about all that comes to mind.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Scott, you’re experience with motion graphics dwarfs mine. I don’t know whether these will help, but there are a couple of things I’d try.
Since you’re on a Mac, does the Activity Monitor provide any clues to memory usage? Does AE crash? If so, does the crash reporter provide any clues?
Have you tried 1. Setting the Secret prefs to purge every x number of frames, 2. the old standby of resetting AE preferences.
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Hi Brian… when it comes to inconsistent trouble shooting… experience clearly is not helping ME… lol…. im not to proud to ask for help…. the cow community is awesome.
I totally forgot about the secret prefs thing… I have a feeling I was just dealing with too many pre comped files… one that was 2500 pixels wide… I narrowed it down on a lot of levels…. my pre rendered quicktimes were buried in folder within folder within folder and collecting my files and putting them all in the same folder seemed to help some… my comp rendered after about a 15 minute wait… only a 5 minute render… so im happy it rendered but still feeling somethings not quite right… ive got to work this out soon… as im debuting a new reel and ‘re joining’ the animation workforce here full steam in the next 3-4 weeks… (after a years break for personal reasons) and we all know clients are not as understanding of a spinning beachball… lol…. I cant wait till im fully upgraded on my second machine and all 64 bit… that should help… fyi activity monitor looked normal…
eliminated any motion blur like ted suggested… thanks again for the feedback… im going to go at it again tomorrow full time… gotta look up the secret prefs thing again… its been a while 🙂
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com -
thanks Dave… this was simply a massive project… even for me…. lol… I literally “pruned” the thing down and down and down… to troubleshoot it and keep the project from bogging down… I typically do that on large projects anyway.. saving v1 v2 v3 etc…. each one with more pre rendered uncompressed footage layers… I dont think ive used open gl in years if ever… so thats not it…. I used to have a few effects in quicktime format that I composited in… not sure if those were uncompressed… but eventually they were no longer elements and were merged in my quicktime….
this is a 10 second animation 1340×840 ( over sized for my later flexibility at 1280×720 or lower rez )
i HAVE NOT upgraded surprisingly… too 9.0.3 im at 9.0.0.346 (not sure what those last digits mean… but I am going to upgrade as soon as im done with this…
thanks so much Cow Community… all ideas are appreciated… if I find out why specifically…. ill post it for sure….
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com -
I upgraded to 9.0.3 my comp is now ridiculously simple… 11 layers… all quicktime uncompressed movies. a couple feathered masks and no plug ins used at all… I got it to render after 23 minutes… it rendered my comp which took all of 3 minutes. So 25 minutes total…
at least it did it this time. It also once in a while spins the beachball… then as I click around the screen I click back on the AE interface… and it does NOT select ae at all… it wont let me select ae and is essentially unresponsive… Im torn between AE and the system…. if its an issue.
the fact that ram previews seem to be fine is telling… then simply going to the ‘formal’ rendering dialogue I get output inconsistencies or straight out unresponsive zombie application…
I need to start calling on clients heavily in the next 3-4 weeks… so i need to resolve this badly… I cant drop the ball on a client project… thank goodness this is personal for my reel….
continue to take advice…. re installing the software could be my nightmare of nightmares due to the huge plug in groups I have… each one having its own unique id # or codes…. uugghhh…
thanks… Scott
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com -
this is just too “serious” for me to not feel confident about… especially given that I am going to be getting back into production work again very soon.
That said… I have found a way to migrate fully to a 64 bit system and all my plug ins etc etc….
I need to do it anyway… and thanks to some financial help… I can do it now… this should eliminate the
performance issues i have been having…. a bug here a bug there… I can deal with and trouble shoot. This render delay issue just freaked me out… and resolutions and layers are not getting any smaller or less complex.
thanks again Dave and more for the help…. ive got a LOT of stuff to upgrade over the week to come…
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com
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