Frustrated with Dynamic Link. Does it really just suck?

[Tom Daigon]

I use dynamic link a lot on CS6 and have no issues with it at all. That might be due to my machine configuration as seen below.

8GB of ram is rather small for HD work, but you might be experiencing issues for other reasons as well.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You do not have sufficient RAM to run both apps concurrently, in a productive manner. After you’ve initiated DL and you’re in the linked-to app, close the initiating app.

DL works as a live link BUT does not require both apps to be open, concurrently. Links/Updates to the initiating app are updated as and when you switch to or open the initiating app.

Hopefully, you will have a more productive experience with the prescribed workflow.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects ACE/ACI (version 7)

[Vishesh Arora]

Max

One should have at least 16 GB RAM for properly using AE’s all features.

Vishesh Arora
3D and Motion Graphics Artist
Films Rajendra

Blog:
https://digieffects.wordpress.com

Demo Reel(3D):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPgIJU_BR8

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Vishesh Arora] “One should have at least 16 GB RAM for properly using AE’s all features.”

It’s not the amount of RAM in the system but the amount of RAM allocated to each core/thread which is assigned to AE that is crucial.

The 8-core Mac is essentially 16-cores, with hyperthreading. 32GB is the bare minimum for such a system.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects ACE/ACI (version 7)

[Walter Soyka]

I agree with Tom, Vishesh, and Roland that 8 GB of RAM is too little. For maximum Ae performance, I generally recommend 3-4 GB per core, or 24 to 32 GB of RAM for your system.

Dynamic Link cannot use Ae’s multiprocessing feature, so you may notice poorer performance when dynamic linking Ae comps into Premiere. I highly recommend caching Ae comps that you dynamic link into Premiere, so that Premiere (via DL and Ae) can pull from the cache instead of always re-rendering on the fly.

As for workflow suggestions, what is it that you are trying to accomplish?

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

[Max Palmer]

Well, I guess it does come down to RAM! My company will be getting us new machines soon anyway, so then I will get an opportunity to stuff it chock full of memory.

I guess what I’m trying to accomplish is taking my edited footage from a series of interviews, and exporting to AE for motion graphics and titles. From now though, I think I may just export from Premiere, which doesn’t take too long, and then just bring the exported video files into AE. I don’t ever use DL to go from AE to Premiere though. Do I have to worry about caching then?

[Walter Soyka]

[Max Palmer] “I guess what I’m trying to accomplish is taking my edited footage from a series of interviews, and exporting to AE for motion graphics and titles. “

Titles are a good use for Dynamic Link. Depending on the title design and how it composites, you may be able to link the title (without the footage) from Ae into Pr, and lay it over the footage there.

[Max Palmer] “I don’t ever use DL to go from AE to Premiere though. Do I have to worry about caching then?”

You can use Ae CS6’s new caching features for a DL performance boost going from Ae to Pr. Cache from Pr to Ae does not apply (nor would it offer much if it did).

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

[Darby Edelen]

[Roland R. Kahlenberg] “The 8-core Mac is essentially 16-cores, with hyperthreading. 32GB is the bare minimum for such a system.”

I think AE would be okay-ish with 8GB of RAM just so long as he’s not using Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously, that’ll eat his machine alive.

With AE + PPro running that might be a different story.

RAM is definitely the easiest and most cost effective investment you can make to improve your workstation.

Darby Edelen

[Vishesh Arora]

Roland

Thanks for the information about the RAM allocated to each core. But can you give me a link on this topic so that I can have a deep knowledge on it it works, etc.

Vishesh Arora
3D and Motion Graphics Artist
Films Rajendra

Blog:
https://digieffects.wordpress.com

Demo Reel(3D):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPgIJU_BR8

[Walter Soyka]

[Vishesh Arora] “Thanks for the information about the RAM allocated to each core. But can you give me a link on this topic so that I can have a deep knowledge on it it works, etc.”

Multiprocessing launches a separate instance of the After Effects renderer, and each instance is responsible for rendering a different frame. These separate processes cannot access each others’ areas of memory, so each instance needs enough RAM to load its own copy any footage required, hold its own caches, hold its own intermediate renders and final output, and leave some working memory for the process.

Basically, imagine how RAM impacts performance with multi-processing turned off. If you allocated only 1 GB to Ae, it could cache much less, requiring more hard drive reads and providing much slower performance than if you had allocated 3 GB. This same logic applies to every instance of multiprocessing.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of duplication in RAM with this system, but it’s a necessary evil due to the nature of the Ae renderer and protected memory schemes on modern operating systems.

As a whole, these multiple processes must not take up so much total system RAM that the operating system or other apps are completely starved of RAM, or else the OS will start swapping RAM out to virtual memory on the hard disk and slow everything to a crawl in the process.

Memory settings on RAM-constrained systems are important, because they let you balance the number of multiprocessing instances (CPUs) versus the amount of RAM each will get. While it’s easy to assume that doing anything to increase the number of rendering CPUs will increase render performance, that’s not necessarily the case. Some renders benefit from fewer CPUs with more RAM each while others benefit from more CPUs with less RAM. Lowering the RAM allocation per core while cranking the number of CPUs up can actually result in slower renders than turning multiprocessing off entirely.

There is no universal “best” memory setting; different comps will have different memory requirements, but the recommended settings linked below are a reasonably conservative starting point.

Here are a couple good blog entries on the topic from Todd Kopriva to read:

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2009/12/performance-tip-dont-starve-yo.html

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/03/performance-tip-dont-oversched.html

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/10/please-try-recommended-memory-settings-for-after-effects-cs5-and-give-feedback.html

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