AE CC Multiprocessing

[Walter Soyka]

[Farhan Ali] “Can someone please suggest what would be the best possible solution. “

See Adobe’s FAQ What are the optimum memory settings for best performance in After Effects? [link]

[Farhan Ali] “Also, when it comes to rendering I mainly use Adobe Media Encoder and do not rendering directly from AE. Not sure if that would affect performance/rendering times.”

When you render from AME, all rendering happens in a single background process. Multiprocessing is not available from AME. For maximum performance, render from Ae with multiprocessing on, then encode the output file in AME. You can automate this with an AME watch folder.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Farhan Ali]

Hey Walter thanks for you’re reply, I will be checking out the link you mentioned.
Also I did some tests, rendering using AE without multiprocessing reduced the time compared to AME by 2 hours 15 minutes! That’s insanely fast, although it looked like 82% of the RAM was being used by AE.

But the downside of rendering using AE is that the final video size is huge! Just over 22GB for 2 minute clip. Anyway I could reduce the file size, or is this where AME comes into play?

Thanks

[Walter Soyka]

[Farhan Ali] “Also I did some tests, rendering using AE without multiprocessing reduced the time compared to AME by 2 hours 15 minutes! That’s insanely fast, although it looked like 82% of the RAM was being used by AE.”

I assume you mean using Ae WITH multiprocessing, not without?

MP uses a ton of RAM, because it basically starts a separate instance of the After Effects renderer for each simultaneous frame being rendered (up to the number of available CPU cores).

I have written a lot about multiprocessing here in the last couple weeks; a quick search on this forum for “multiprocessing” will give you a lot of background on how it all works.

[Farhan Ali] “But the downside of rendering using AE is that the final video size is huge! Just over 22GB for 2 minute clip. Anyway I could reduce the file size, or is this where AME comes into play?”

You could render to a lightly-compressed format like CineForm/DNxHD/ProRes instead of a totally uncompressed format — that would help reduce your initial file size without compromising much quality — but yes, AME will do a much better job of compression than Ae does.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Farhan Ali]

I will search around for your threads should be interesting.

When I’m rendering using AE I’m using “QuickTime” output module, the final outcome tends to have large file size.
If I was to use AME to encode the rendered video from AE would that affect quality?

Also, what other “output module” should I render my projects instead of QuickTime? As the file sizes are huge.

Thanks

[Walter Soyka]

[Farhan Ali] “When I’m rendering using AE I’m using “QuickTime” output module, the final outcome tends to have large file size. If I was to use AME to encode the rendered video from AE would that affect quality? “

Yes, of course. Most video compression schemes are lossy, meaning they throw away visual information in order to lower data rate/file size. Compression is compromise.

[Farhan Ali] “Also, what other “output module” should I render my projects instead of QuickTime? As the file sizes are huge.”

An output module is a element in an After Effects render queue item that is responsible for post-processing and encoding output frames. QuickTime may be used by an output module, but it is not an output module itself.

QuickTime is a container format that can use many different codecs. Using QuickTime does not make huge file sizes, but using uncompressed or losslessly-compressed formats like Animation might.

See this FAQ from Adobe, “What is the best format for rendering and exporting from After Effects?”

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/729526

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]