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AECS6 performance on new Mac Pro
I’ve got a project using 4k ProRes 444 footage on a new mac pro (specs below).
I’m really surprised at how slow rendering a comp is; I had assumed this machine would fly through this kind of work.Essentially it’s a single 4k ProRes clip, freshly brought into a new comp, no effects, no other footage.
The clip is on the internal drive which reads at like 1GB per second, so thats not an issue, and the preview quality is set to quarter quality.In my opinion this should render practically in real time, yet it’s only rendering around 3-4 fps.
Any tips on finding out where the bottleneck is?6-core 2013 Mac Pro
32GB RAM
dual FirePro d700
After Effects CS6 -
6 Replies
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What do you mean by rendering? Are you trying to watch it in Ae, or are you trying to output a file to disk?
If you’re watching in Ae, you should know that Ae is not built for real-time performance. You’ll have to RAM preview (0 on the numeric keypad), rather than standard preview (spacebar) for real-time playback.
If you are rendering for output, what are your Memory & Multiprocessing settings?
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 -
Make sure you set the Multiprocessing on and include the ram preview for the multiprocessing.
You have 12 threads so set the ram usage to 1.5GB or 2GB per thread. The GPU’s wont effect the performance at all. Essentially that is a 12 Thread PC to work with AE so the performance is not going to be a major improvement over 4 Core/8 thread systems. Unfortunately I already see allot of editors getting burned by the 6 core because of the price differences. There is a big difference in Cache between the 6 and 8 Core and that will make a big difference with AE. I don’t really see any reason to get the 6 while the 10 and 12 are the chips you want especially for AE but at a price tag of a Dual Xeon system.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com -
I’m referring to RAM preview.
The RAM preview calculates around 2-3 frames per second, whereas my 2006 Quad core Mac Pro doesn’t do that much worse in a side by side test.
I guess I was just expecting a ‘knock my socks off’ improvement, but it’s most likely held back because CS6 is not optimized for the new Mac Pro. -
From what I understand, the only thing the multiprocessing option will do is render multiple frames simultaneously, whereas having it off, all available cores render the same frame, thus making the gains negligible.
The rest of your post is good info. I didn’t realize the dual GPU’s have no bearing on the speed of RAM preview and now when I think about it, I really only did go from 4 to 6 cores, though I thought the different chip architecture between 8 years of development (from my 2006 MP to this new one) might have made more of a difference.
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[Shay Carriere] “From what I understand, the only thing the multiprocessing option will do is render multiple frames simultaneously, whereas having it off, all available cores render the same frame, thus making the gains negligible.”
This statement is not true (except with the ray-tracing renderer which is highly multithreaded and does not even support rendering multiple frame simultaneously). You should turn multiprocessing on.
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 -
I have tested this many times and the difference in ram preview performance with Multiprocessing ie multiframe processing on and off is very significant. Right now that is still the most efficient CPU rendering process.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com
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