GPU role in AE

[Todd Kopriva]

The GPU can be used to accelerate rendering for both previews and for final output. Most people (including me), restrict the use of OpenGL rendering to the OpenGL rendering to OpenGL—Interactive, which uses the GPU for rendering as you modify properties and drag things around; but it falls back to the CPU when you’re not changing properties.

If you enable the Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, And Footage Panels preference, the GPU can also be used to accelerate the drawing of images to the screen. (See “Improve performance”.)

Some effects (including the Cartoon effect) can take advantage of the GPU, too.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Erik Lindahl]

One issue at the moment with having activated OpenGL previews (even if only the “interactive” setting) is that you get zero feedback on your video-output during the time you change something. It will update AFTER you’ve done a change but yeah… This renders the feature perhaps not useless but limited in it’s use in a lot of environments sadly.

Perhaps CS5 will give us both? GPU acceleration AND video-output? One can always hope… 🙂

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Curious Turtle]

Also, some filters make substantial use of the GPU, Boris Continuum Complete for example.

Always check graphic card and driver compatibility before using the OpenGL features in After Effects.

Cheers,
Ben

Curious Turtle Pro Video
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