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Is it possible to render faster?
Hello,
I posted this in the premiere pro forum, but please allow me to do the same here since i consider some questions related to AE also.
Hello,
Last time a made a 1 hour 41 minutes video for my friend’s wedding. Guess what, it took my computer 2 DAYS to render the AVI file on my computer. 2 DAYS!! I was here unable to touch anything on my computer for 2 days which means no way to get emails, have skypephone calls to customers, nothing.
I said to myself: you have to find a way to render faster.
Here is what my system looks like:
512 MB DDR
2800 CPU AMD SEMPRON
128 MB ATI all-in-wonder 9600 graphic card
Windows XP proI use premiere pro 1.5
What do you think would need improvement so rendering could go faster? more RAM? more CPU speed? Better graphic card?
I have heard of REAL-TIME bards, but iam not sure i have thouroughly understood what advantages they bring in the rendering process, i figure with one like that my project would have been rendered in , well, 1h41?
As you can see, i have lots of questions. I spare you the other questions i was asking myself during those “lost” 2 days LOL.
Thank you
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5 Replies
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I would suggest that you first look at your workflow. A 1 hour+ timeline in AE isn’t always required. See if you can ppeform some of the task in an editing application and only use AE for multi-layered, compositing-like functions.
More RAM would be good for you.
Then have a look-see at what the folks at Gridironsoftware can do for you.
HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files -
Apart from upgrading your hardware (RAM!), you should seriously consider re-evaluating your workflow. Presumably you were only capturing DV via Firewire and then rendered it out to a “normal” AVI, right? In that case it was more or less a software-only operation, meaning your CPU was doing all the work. This would explain the long render time. That’s especially critical for the final render. Apart from the obvious things like compression to reduce data-rates there’s also a lot extra things going on like colorspace conversion from YUV to RGB that can literally load your CPU until it glows in the dark. Even with hardware support you can’t really avoid this and it won’t do you much good as all editing boards will only provide realtime functionality in there native formats. In away it’s the same in the existing scenario: Had you elected to keep your data as a native DV format and not recompress it, it should have been flying and possibly not taken longer than 5 or 6 hours (it would still take some time to render the effects, but where there is nothing to render, it would be realtime). I would give the matter some serious consideration and re-think, if it was really necessary to create the AVI. Of course this depends on what you were intending to do with it, so you may perhaps elaborate on this a bit.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Mylenium, you and Roland touched some interesting point. Unfortunatly iam lacking some premisses to fully profit from your advices.
I am not sure i know the basics about what software-only or hardware-editing are.
“I would give the matter some serious consideration and re-think, if it was really necessary to create the AVI. Of course this depends on what you were intending to do with it, so you may perhaps elaborate on this a bit.
”I used to work like this:
– I rent a camera or two and capture the event
– Transfer their content up to my computer (mostly in AVI format) so i won’t keep the camera too long
– The raw AVI file then goes into Premiere pro where i make the edit according to the storyboard or customer’s recommendation, do some rotoscoping, apply effects, etc.
-Then i save the final rendering as AVI
– Burn DVDs, etc (i also render some small sequences for the web because sometimes, specially in weddings, the customer wants their friends abroad to look at what they missed)I can undertand this workflow is far from being the best one lol.
Can you please suggest me a typical worflow to improve this?
Thank you
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Mmh, that indeed doesn’t sound too exciting. The AVI is presumably mostly just a container containing DV streams (it would read Microsoft DV as compression). This would be my first point to contend. Neither is MS’ DV implementation very “clean” nor is it very high quality. I also believe that you wouldn’t work optimally with it in Premiere, since it cannot always detect the blocks of the DV compression, thus introducing extra compression even with a simple hard cut by recalculating the edited clip (I haven’t used Premiere in a while, but I know that in older versions there always were such problems). Finally, it will also explain the lengthy rendering: Premiere (or AE for that matter) need to “unwrap” your DV streams from the conatianer, do their rendering and then pack the result back into an AVI. If you have audio, this will of course also need to be processed (though in comparison to the video it’s nearly neglectible). So to make a long story short: Most of your troubles could be resolved by getting a “real” capture card. It would bypass Windows’ own routines, use it’s own CoDecs and also have some extra benefit’s like additional software. I know it’s easier said than done, but I think you will see great improvements and probably consider the 300 bucks a good investment.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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“Most of your troubles could be resolved by getting a “real” capture card”
Any suggestion?
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