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3rd day of rendering
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[jack fox] “Before stopping the render for the screen shot, the brackets were at 3:20 and now are at 2:39 after I hit the space bar.”
Hitting the space bar doesn’t start a render; it starts a standard preview.
To render with the render queue, first you must add it to the render queue (as you have), then go to the render queue window, change any settings you need to, and hit the Render button.
Since you’re new to After Effects, I’d recommend the following link, in which former documentation lead Todd Kopriva pulls together some important introductory materials:
https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/01/getting-started-with-after-eff.html
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 -
Say I only added it to the render queue, would the composition viewer continue to move in slow motion (tying up all my processing power) while the orange bar is swiping on and off under the viewer and the red line in the timeline continues to move from left to right? Is that the action expected of the standard preview?
Thanks for the link.
jmf
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yes… that’s exactly how a preview would behave. the yellow line is what ae displays as it is rendering a single frame for preview, the red line is the cti which marks where it is in the timeline.
what you’ll want to do is add to render queue, then set the output module and where to save the file accordingly, then hit the render button at the top-right of the render queue to start the render.
as for why this render is taking such a ridiculously long time to render, we would need to know more about your footage. i have a feeling that you have hdv, mpeg2 or mpeg4 footage, and that may be what is really slowing after effects down.
if you can convert anything like that to a compression type that does not use temporal compression, after effects should handle that much better. codecs like dv, dvcprohd, prores, dnxhd, quicktime photo-jpeg, lossless animation or uncompressed will run much better in after effects.
do you know anything about the footage that you are using? where it came from (camera, nle)? if you can open it in quicktime or another player, you can usually find the codec. in quicktime, choose window>show inspector and it will have that information under format.
another way to speed up renders is to limit the area that is being effected. smart blur is fairly processor intensive, so if you can limit the area that it is processing to be jsut what you need then it will go faster… say you only need to smart blur a quarter of the frame, you may be able to apply smart blur to an adjustment layer that is 1/4 the screen size, using that rendered mask as a track matte for the adjustment layer and you processing time for that effect will be 4x faster.
also, as has been discussed, changing your memory & multiprocessing settings may help too. often users forget to leave enough ram for ‘other processes’ and restrict ram from import system processes which can then slow the whole system down.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
The render settings are shown in the image. The clip is a 23.98 quicktime export from FCP that AE recommended and then converted to 47.952.
jmf
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[jack fox] “The clip is a 23.98 quicktime export from FCP that AE recommended and then converted to 47.952”
do you need to convert the frame rate to 47.952… i’m asking since that’s a rather odd frame rate.
if ae just happened to think the footage was 47.952 and you know the frame rate is 23.98, then you should correct it by selecting the footage in the project window and choose file>interpret footage>main and enter 23.976 for the frame rate (that’s the actual frame rate for 23.98 from fcp).
you’d also need to set the comp to the same frame rate (composition>comp settings). and you might need to conform the rendered matte footage too (using the interpret footage settings method above).
also, you won’t want to render from ae to h.264, your iamge quality will be poor. for fcp, i’d recommend rendering to lossless animation, prores or quicktime photo-jpeg at at least 75%, then import to fcp, or use a compression utility to do a multipass compression to h.264.
and if you are using h.264 footage from fcp in ae, in the future, i’d recommend exporting from fcp as one of the above mentioned codecs… actually, i beleive that most fcp editors recommend working in fcp with prores settings when you are using h.264 footage, but you may want to inquire in the fcp forum for fcp-h.264 workflows.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
This is the best thread ever. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, Fox throws down a 47.952 frame rate. Awesome! I can’t wait until we get into pixel aspect ratios, alpha channels or bit depth.
Sorry for the interruption. Carry on.
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Thanks Gray, but I can’t take all the credit. When I was creating a layer to use the roto brush, AE popped shot up a warning about using 23.976 and offered to change it to 47.952. Kevin overruled the machine, damned the torpedoes, and got me back on track. CS5 is not easy, but well worth the effort. Thanks all.
jmf
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[jack fox] “ae shot up a warning about using 23.976 and offered to change it to 47.952”
that’s an interesting message… i don’t have cs5 (so, no rotobrush to troubleshoot)… the only thing i can think of is that rotobrush is giving you a suggestion based on an assumption that the footage was interlaced…
if the footage was interlaced, i can see that you should set the comp to double the framerate to see data from both fields, but 23.976 should be progressive, and ae should be interpreting it as such.
you may want to double check that for the footage using the interpret footage settings. the option to separate fields should be set to off unless the footage is interlaced… at that point there is probably something wrong in fcp or at least with the export settings in fcp.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
“lower field” was selected, so I changed it to off as you suggest.
Remove pull down was set to “off.”
jmf
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After the change from lower field to off, I get this warning message:
“After Effects warning: Roto Brush will not render correctly because the source frame rate changed from 47.952 fps to 23.976 fps. To fix, change it back.”
jmf
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