AE render vs. watching paint dry?

[Darby Edelen]

This will all depend on how many/what effects you are using, motion blur, lights and depth of field (i.e. bells and whistles) but it took my machine about 32 minutes to render my first 30 second (900 frame) HD-DVD menu.

The most complicated effects I was using, however, were Stroke, Drop Shadow and CC Burn Film. Other than those three effects it was all video.

Have you tried running test RAM Previews with Draft 3D on? What effects are you using? Time based effects will absolutely kill HD renders (pre-render!). In addition, if you are using OpenGL at all I would recommend against it.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Jason Boucher]

It’s a 3D comp containing an over sized BG, 6 frames with 720p video playing in them, a camera, light, motion blur, DOF… I guess bells and whistles in that regard.

I will go the prerender route and see what happens. Any hoops to be wary of? Should just import and replace the precomps, right?

I have also switched to adaptive res instead of OpenGL.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will give it a whirl!

Jason

greydogfilms.com

[Darby Edelen]

The other thing to note is that in a composition using 3D lights the default shadow map uses the same resolution as the composition, which is huge in the case of HD. This is probably necessary to give you nice shadows, but will slow your render down enormously compared to an SD composition using the same lights/shadows. You can manually adjust the resolution of the shadow map in Composition > Composition Settings > Advanced > Options… but note that the more you decrease the shadow map resolution the more blockiness/errors you will see in your shadows.

Also note that pre-rendering was a suggestion if you are using any pre-composed time based/render intensive effects. It won’t help much if those pre-rendered footage items are still using DOF, motion blur, 3D lights/shadows, etc. In this scenario my suggestion would be to get away with as much as you can without using 3D lights.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Jason Boucher]

Thanks Darby. I am pre-rendering the frame comps, which have animated text, video and a frame. I’ll see if that helps at all.

I suppose the difference is SD to HD is playing the majority of the role in slowing this thing down.. I am just a little shocked that it could take that long. But I do have shadows and light and motion blur etc to contend with.

I’ll let you know how I fare!

THanks again!

Jason

greydogfilms.com

[Ken Ecker]

the most useful plugin ever

https://www.gridironsoftware.com/NucleoPro/

[Jeremy Allen]

I’ve always been puzzled by AE render times as well. It just doesnt seem like there is alot of consistency to render times between different projects. But as mentioned, the time it takes is usually closely tied to whatever effects you are using.

I don’t know if this really makes a difference or not, but it seems logical to me. I always quit all other programs if I have to do a big render. For instance, I recently did a 30 second piece that took about 45 minutes to render. Well of course I had to make changes. For the next render, I quit all other programs and it took about 10 minutes. But even with quitting other programs, I never seem to use more than 60% of my Ram for rendering.

Someone also suggested covering the view window with the Render Qeue while rendering, so the screen doesnt have to refresh every frame.

[Darby Edelen]

[JeremyAllen] “Someone also suggested covering the view window with the Render Qeue while rendering, so the screen doesnt have to refresh every frame. “

Ack, this should have been one of my first suggestions! I’ve never worked any other way so I guess I forgot it isn’t the default =)

Renders tend to go a fair amount faster if AE doesn’t have to send the rendered frames to your display. An alternative is rendering with the Caps Lock key on, but then you make irritating posts in the Cow forums IN ALL CAPS!!

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Jimmy Brunger]

Apparently rendering with AE minimised is even more productive..not sure how true that is but worth a go.

One thing you dcould do to determine what is taking so long is set a 1/4 res render going draft or something and then twirl down the ‘currnet render detials’ bit and see which effects/processes AE hangs on as it renders thourgh the comp.

Nucleo will maximise your system of course if you have multi procs and squeeze all your RAM out, but also dead easy to pre-render with too.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jeremy Allen]

So I have a Power Mac Quad 2.5Ghz with 4Gb Ram, and AE7pro only uses around 60% of 3Gb when rendering. Does it save the other 1Gb for other apps and OS or what? If that’s the case, why cant I get 100% of 3GB? What am I missing there?

[Jimmy Brunger]

You’ll need Nucleo or AE CS3 to use all your RAM/procs. I think on some simple tasks in AE even then your cores/RAM isn’t totally utilised. And yes, your OS and other apps need a healthy chunk of RAM aswell.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0