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Fast – why leave AE and Motion out of the fun?
So, to add a bit more to the mix, I ran a similar speed comparison between Motion and After Effects CC 2015. Same machine as here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/83187ProResHQ 1080p/23.98 Alexa camera files
1080p/23.98 composition 1 min. longI placed six clips back to back and scaled these to 120%.
On top of this, I place 4 PIP clips for the full 1 min. All 4 clips scaled to 25% and rotated.
All clips had a native Levels and Hue/Saturation filter to color correct.
Therefore, the AE comp and Motion comp were as close as possible.
Rendered out to ProRes.Motion :29
AE with cached frames before render :41
AE w/o cached buffer – 5:19Plus Motion was able to run this comp in real-time. AE played it (before it was buffered) at about 4-10fps. In reality, when you work on an AE job, a lot of the composition timeline will be buffered because playing through with a spacebar tap automatically caches frames for real-time playback the next time. So, in the real-world, AE’s render for a comp would be somewhere in between the two numbers.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
14 Replies
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Great comparison.
It baffles me that we still have nowhere even close to realtime playback in Ae for some things that seem very simple. Even dropping resolution to 1/2 or even 1/4 often doesn’t change things enough to make it useful.
A basic keying job today in 1080p ProRes was taking me between 8-13 minutes to render out for sections that were between 15s and 1m long. Effects used were keylight, selective colour, and colour correction. I’m not saying keying is simple but the amount of time it was taking me to do ram previews and renders on a new Mac Pro system with max ram and d700s was crazy.
I really should give motion a lot more time and effort to learn.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
[Tom Sefton] “I really should give motion a lot more time and effort to learn.”
Motion is a considerably faster renderer and uses more real-time functionality. However, in actual projects, I still find the AE workflow much faster. Once you choke the real-time power of Motion, then AE’s adaptive resolution throttle ends up being a lot more fluid in how you work through the timeline/composition. So there are pros and cons with each tool.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Tom Sefton] “Great comparison.
It baffles me that we still have nowhere even close to realtime playback in Ae for some things that seem very simple. Even dropping resolution to 1/2 or even 1/4 often doesn’t change things enough to make it useful.
A basic keying job today in 1080p ProRes was taking me between 8-13 minutes to render out for sections that were between 15s and 1m long. Effects used were keylight, selective colour, and colour correction. I’m not saying keying is simple but the amount of time it was taking me to do ram previews and renders on a new Mac Pro system with max ram and d700s was crazy.
I really should give motion a lot more time and effort to learn.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
https://www.pollenstudio.co.uk“To be fair, AE’s render engine is ancient
[Tom Sefton] “Great comparison.
It baffles me that we still have nowhere even close to realtime playback in Ae for some things that seem very simple. Even dropping resolution to 1/2 or even 1/4 often doesn’t change things enough to make it useful.
A basic keying job today in 1080p ProRes was taking me between 8-13 minutes to render out for sections that were between 15s and 1m long. Effects used were keylight, selective colour, and colour correction. I’m not saying keying is simple but the amount of time it was taking me to do ram previews and renders on a new Mac Pro system with max ram and d700s was crazy.
I really should give motion a lot more time and effort to learn.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
https://www.pollenstudio.co.uk“To be fair, AE’s render engine is ancient. Have you considered other applications for keying tasks? Maybe Mamba FX or Hitfilm would be faster. If you already have Motion, PixelConduit (which is free) or Simon’s Hawaiki Keyer might also be worth trying.
Shawn
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[Tom Sefton] “It baffles me that we still have nowhere even close to realtime playback in Ae for some things that seem very simple. Even dropping resolution to 1/2 or even 1/4 often doesn’t change things enough to make it useful. “
It baffles me we still have nowhere the Tools as what After Effects offers in Motion.
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I’m not an After Effects user, but there seems to be some hope for After Effects OSX users, with the demo that Adobe gave on Metal on WWDC.
The speed gains they showed with Metal on Illustrator and After Effects were very impressive.Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Vimeo framework” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
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I hope Fusion can kick some butt, still waiting for it to come out.
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[Tom Sefton] “It baffles me that we still have nowhere even close to realtime playback in Ae for some things that seem very simple. Even dropping resolution to 1/2 or even 1/4 often doesn’t change things enough to make it useful. “
[Shawn Miller] “To be fair, AE’s render engine is ancient”
It’s worth pointing out that in Ae CC 2015, the renderer has (finally) been separated from the UI. It’s a big engineering effort, and I think that even though there’s still a way to go, this is the most important work that’s been done in Ae since 64-bit in CS5.
From Adobe’s After Effects “Region of Interest” blog:
“When we asked you, our customers, a year ago what you’d like us to focus on in After Effects, the response was enthusiastic and nearly unanimous: You wanted us to focus on making After Effects respond more quickly and smoothly as you carried out your creative work. We listened. The great majority of the After Effects team has been hard at work for the past year on a fundamental re-architecture of the application that lays the groundwork for performance improvements of many kinds, and this major update that we will be releasing soon bears the first fruits of this effort.”
https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2015/04/after-effects-cc-spring-2015-update-revealed.html
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “[Tom Sefton] “It baffles me that we still have nowhere even close to realtime playback in Ae for some things that seem very simple. Even dropping resolution to 1/2 or even 1/4 often doesn’t change things enough to make it useful. ”
[Shawn Miller] “To be fair, AE’s render engine is ancient”
It’s worth pointing out that in Ae CC 2015, the renderer has (finally) been separated from the UI. It’s a big engineering effort, and I think that even though there’s still a way to go, this is the most important work that’s been done in Ae since 64-bit in CS5″
I agree, Walter. Adobe seems to have taken a very good first step towards improving playback, and I expect that we’ll see even more improvements down the line. Honestly though, the AE renderer is plenty fast enough for me… and I’m talking about final renders here. These days, anything faster than four minutes per frame seems speedy. 🙂
Shawn
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[David Mathis] “I hope Fusion can kick some butt, still waiting for it to come out.”
I’m curious David, why Fusion in particular. What about it catches your attention? Of the node based alternatives on the Mac platform, I’ve used MambaFX and PixelConduit (just Conduit back in the day), and they are both quite good – plus, they’re available right now. 🙂
Shawn
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I guess it is something about the name, plus it just looks cool. I also have Resolve on my system.
The magnetic timeline, it’s magnetic-o-matic!
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