after effects cs5 render freeze 12 core 64G RAM

[Noah Klersfeld]

thanks Jon
The portion of work that renders before the crash is usable and I only need
to render the unfinished portion. Is this not typical. I am rendering to the
same drive where the source is…why would this be a problem? There is
plenty of free space.

[Noah Klersfeld]

in the activity monitor:

when rendering my CPU reads % User = 11.82, % System = 3.33, % Idle = 86.94 (fluctuates)
threads = 1850, processes = 60
my cache is disabled within AE
(in AE at the bottom of the render queue it reads RAM 17% used of 64GB)
system memory used = 50GB
disc activity shows a jagged green line at top of square with peak 46.6 mb/sec
and a flat red line at the bottom of the square

does this indicate anything to you?

the readings i listed are at the beginning of the render not at the point when it
fails. would these meter readings change? For this particular piece it always
fails after 16 hours (of 30). is something accumulating to a point that causes it to fail?
thanks for your help

[Kevin Camp]

the last couple of responses i’ve made were (using task manager to monitor cpus, and such) were more for performance issues rather than the crash issue… the last settings you posted seem like they should be getting you through the render — 16gb should be plenty for the os and other apps, 12 cores with about 4gb each should be good for ae.

does you render keep crashing at the same point?

and, yes things do accumulate in ae. the ram cache accumulates to a point (default is around 60% of ae’s available ram). at that point it starts to clear cached frames (oldest first).

sometimes ae can have problems clearing that cache and that can cause a crash. if you think that is the problem, hold shift while choosing any of ae’s preferences (like ‘general’) from the menu bar.

then if you check the list of preferences from the pref window, at the bottom should be one called ‘secret’. select it, and set the ‘purge every xx frames’ value to a number of frames that is less than where the crash is occurring (ie, if it crashes around frame 400, try a setting around 300). once you’re finished with this project, clear the purge frame value to set ae back to normal.

also, if the crash occurs at the same frame every time, check the comp to see if there is a keyframe or a layer inpoint at that frame. it may be that there is something happening at that point that is causing the crash.

another option would be to disable ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’ and see if that gets you though the render.

lastly, when you say ae crashes, you do mean that it gives you an error or just unexpectedly quits, not that the render simply ends early, correct?

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Noah Klersfeld]

i am getting an error message after about 16 hours of 30 into the render. the system is not crashing, just the render fails and reads “”after effects error: an output module stopped responding. the file may be damaged or corrupted. you may need to restart after effects.” the source footage is ok. it does not fail at the same frame each time. when i disable render multiple frames the 30 hour estimate becomes 115 hours…

[Kevin Camp]

it’s interesting that the partially rendered media is usable… normally a crash during rendering produces a corrupt, or unusable clip.

how long is the comp? (duration)

how large is the file (the portion that gets rendered), in MB or GB?

and have any of your memory setting changes made much of an effect on how much gets rendered, or at what point the render stops?

also, what file type (avi, mov, etc) and codec (lossless, hdv, mpeg) are you outputting?

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Noah Klersfeld]

the comp is 3 minutes long

about 1GB

the memory settings did not make much difference

mov

i tried to output to HDV and then animation (lossless?).
the animation rendered one hour longer before failing…

the comp is made of 500 video layers using only one source clip
and each in layer the video has only a mask applied to it

[Noah Klersfeld]

actually the rendered portion of the HDV is 363MB (16:46 hours and failed)
and the rendered portion of the animation is 13.86GB (17.36 hours and failed)

[Kevin Camp]

i have to admit that i’m at a loss as to why the file won’t finish rendering.

i can say that with 500 footage layers, the slow performance is almost 100% due to drive/drive bus speed… that’s just a lot of frames to have to load for each frame to process, so tweaking memory settings would help much.

if possible, i’d try to split the main comp up into maybe five 100 layer pre-comps (or ten 50 layer pre-comps), and try pre-rendering (composition>pre-render) each pre-comp. if you can do that, you can then render the main comp using the pre-rendered footage.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Darby Edelen]

[noah klersfeld] ”
actually the rendered portion of the HDV is 363MB (16:46 hours and failed)
and the rendered portion of the animation is 13.86GB (17.36 hours and failed)”

More important than this information is what frame it failed on. Did both renders fail on the same frame? If you have QuickTime Player 7 you can view the frame number by clicking on the timecode in the lower left and selecting “Frame Number.”

If they both failed on the same frame, or near the same frame, look for something that is changing in your composition at that frame in AE and try to fix it.

Darby Edelen

[Noah Klersfeld]

thanks Kevin for all of your help.