Colorista 2 and AE CS5: Render Times

[Todd Kopriva]

> How well does Colorista II take advantage of multi-core processing? Hyperthreading?

You could ask Red Giant. They’ll know better than anyone here.

> How much faster are renders with processors that utilize hyperthreading (e.g. Nehalem/Westermere variations vs. early 2008 machines and before)?

It depends. If the bottleneck for your composition was CPU power, then having double the number of effective processors can help. If, on the other had, the bottleneck was memory i/O or disk I/O, then hyperthreading won’t help.

> Are renders faster using the CPU or GPU (or some combination) if you only have a sub $500 graphics card (e.g. the ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB, or a simular 512MB card from the last couple years)?

The graphics card is almost entirely irrelevant to After Effects rendering speeds.

> How many cores or “virtual cores” do you find works best when using “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously?” (It may be helpful to include how much RAM you have installed, as well as how much RAM is allocated for AE, PPro, Encore, and Media Encoder under the “After Effects Multiprocessing” section.)

There’s no one answer to this. It varies by computer and composition. See this and all of the pages pointed to.

> Chris Myer on a lynda.com tutorial says, “Any plug-in effect that you install in AE [CS5] also has to be 64 bit native. And this requires a rewrite [of the plug-in]…” (If you have a subscription to lynda.com, it’s under 1. System Requirements). https://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=61991

So it appears that any plug-in that even works on CS5 must render several times faster on an 8-core vs. a 2 or 4 core machine.

The conclusion that you drew is false and is not implied by what Chris Meyer said. 64-bit does not equal faster.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————

[Chris Davis]

Todd,

Thanks for your help here.

I had called Red Giant before but was unable to talk with a rep., and my phone message was not returned.

I tried again after you posted, and was able to “live chat” with a rep. I was told,

“Colorista II is mainly a GPU plug-in so it does not utilize the Multi-core Processing or Hyperthreading…”

I have a followup question for you or the other people here…

You said on another thread of a particular RAM and CPU allocation settings in AE CS5, “This setting is just about Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously, and it’s just about After Effects. It only affects how many additional background instances of the After Effects application will be started to aid with rendering.”
Link here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/202/886167

Can using “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” speed up rendering with plug-in’s that are not otherwise able to take advantage of multi-core processing, by starting additional background instances of After Effects AND the plug-in?

I suspect the answer is, “no way,” but I thought thought I’d give it a shot. I’m a little off topic here, so I will post again with a different subject heading I don’t get an answer.

Thanks again for your time,

Chris

[Todd Kopriva]

> I suspect the answer is, “no way,”

You’re correct in your suspicion.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————

[Chris Davis]

Mr. Korpriva:

My Creative Cow thread notifications were being filtered into my spam mail box, and I just realized that I did not respond to your last answer.

A sincere thanks for the info.

-Chris

Todd Kopriva
“The conclusion that you drew is false and is not implied by what Chris Meyer said. 64-bit does not equal faster.”