Big Render Woes

[Steve Roberts]

You may have rendered to a codec that creates a large file. Large files may look good, but not all of them are supposed to be played back. They’re supposed to be transferred to another computer or app for more processing … then rendered to a lower-quality codec for playback.

Computers just aren’t fast enough yet to play back the highest-quality files. They have to be compressed in some way.

What is the frame size? 720×480?

Can you render to Sorenson 3 at half size, half frame rate for a test? How does that play?

[Robin Hamilton]

I have a very fast computer that can handle even the Animation codec at full res. And yeah, even if i render it with lossy codecs i get the exact same result. It isn’t quicktime that is hanging, it is the actual video. If I step frame by frame through the video, there is about 3 seconds of the same frame, then it jumps to where it should have been in the video.

[Steve Morris]

Hmmm…..I was thinking the exact same thing that Steve said.
Does this only happen on this one particular comp? Does it happen in other comps?

[Robin Hamilton]

Just this comp. This is the longest comp I have done so far in AE 7. I have tried the sorenson codec, as well as H263, and even Cinipak at 320 x 240. Same results.

New development – When I first launch AE, everything plays fine in a RAM preview or scrubbing the timeline. However, after I render, the Quicktime movie I make has the problem, as well as if I RAM preview or scrub the AE timeline after I render. At around 1 minute 40 seconds, the video is just frozen on a frame for about 3 or 4 seconds.

The orginal quicktimes play just fine though.

Any thoughts?

[Darby Edelen]

I can only recommend that you Edit > Purge > Purge All before you render, and maybe that you try rendering to an image sequence. Are you using any ‘exotic’ or time-based effects in the composition?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Robin Hamilton]

No, that is the funny thing. It is basically just two quicktime movies (rendered with the animation codec) and a simple iris wipe transition (and audio added). That’s all…this is why it has me stumped. I went back to re-render the original quicktimes…(10 mins left out of 2 hours) just to see if it is some kind of corruption in the original footage. It is weird though, because everything plays fine in quicktime and after effects…until I render.

[Itamar Kool]

My guess is that your original quick time file is corrupted somehow. Can;t yo get antother one to replace it?

Kool En De Anderen
dual 1.8 gig G5/Mac OS 10.4.8/Kona 2/Hugh 800 G diskarray, fibrechannel/FCP 5.1.2/AE 7 Pro
http://www.koolendeanderen.nl

[Robin Hamilton]

After rerendering my original comp, then replacing the “possibly corrupted quicktime” with it, I got the exact same result. I have no idea whatsoever.

I do know, however, that there is a reason I didn’t uninstall AE 6.5. I even brought the “possibly corrupted” quicktime in to try it out…worked like a charm. I am wondering why I ever switched to AE 7. Back to AE 6.5 for me….bye bye “unspecified draw error” and frequent project corruption.

I’m not holding my breath for CS 3.

Thanks for all your posts.

[Shawn Lance]

I was curious about your render times so I did a test. I took 2, 4 .2 GB, 2:25 QT ( animation encoded ) movies ( 720 x 486 ) and placed a 5 second iris wipe at the one minute point. Rendering back to the same QT animation codec, it took 10:50. Now, I can play back about half of it before QT starts getting the jitters do to hitting a ram wall but, it still manages to get to the end.
I

[Robin Hamilton]

Actually the final quicktime I am rendering (the 2 quicktime movies with an iris wipe) are rendering at around 7:00 mins on my 3.0 ghz pentium 4 with 2 gigs of RAM.

The 2 hour render I was referring to was the massive composite I did. Instead of trying to transition 2 compositions together and have massive render times each time, I just rendered out to individual quicktime movies to make things faster on the back end.

Sorry for the misinterperetation.