After Effects Rendering problem

[Darby Edelen]

[Joe Espina] “Images are rendering out much darker than they should, it’s also slowing up much more and it’s causing production lags.. (Beach balls)”

I don’t think you should assume this is a hardware issue. Can you tell us what kind of footage you are using? How you’re treating it and how you’re rendering it? Are you using color management? What codec is the source footage and what codec are you rendering to? How are your hard drives configured and do they have plenty of free space?

Also, I would recommend checking Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor) while you’re experiencing the beach balls to see if a background process is hanging.

Darby Edelen

[Joe Espina]

Footage:
DVCProHD 720p

Rendering After Effects to Quicktime – Standard Def:

No color management

Rendering to Xsan:
2.17TB avail

I’m thinking it may be the 6600 GeForce card as the other macs that have the 7300 card seem to be giving us an image that looks great.

– 6600 seems to be crushing the blacks

I also blew out the machine with a can of compressed air just now so I will monitor the performance from here on out

What do you think Darby?

– Joe

[Brittney Siebers]

Have not changed monitor profile or calibrated monitors.

I have rendered the project on the Intel Macs with the 7300 cards and those seem to not crush the black

Codec – Animation 100% highest

Monitor Calibration is the same on BOTH Machines (Cinema HD-30inch)

[Darby Edelen]

[Joe Espina] “I’m thinking it may be the 6600 GeForce card as the other macs that have the 7300 card seem to be giving us an image that looks great.

– 6600 seems to be crushing the blacks”

The video card should not be affecting the renders at all unless you’re doing your final render using OpenGL (which you shouldn’t).

What kind of QuickTime are you rendering to (what codec)? Have you recently calibrated or changed your monitor profile? Have you rendered exactly the same project file on another computer and gotten better results?

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

If the renders from exactly the same project file from your machine and another machine look different when viewed on the same machine… I’m out of ideas.

I suppose you could try swapping out the graphics card, but I’ll reiterate that the graphics card should have no effect unless you’re rendering under OpenGL.

Darby Edelen