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HDV Dynamic Link Workflow check; Optimizing multi-processing CS4
Hello, Please forgive the long post. Wanted to make sure I include everything anyone may ask about.
I/my company machine is struggling to figure out a logical HDV workflow from Premiere to AE, whether using Dynamic Link or not.The project is a 2-hour, two camera edit in Premiere HDV 1080i60 sequence. All footage needs heavy noise reduction due to Auto Gain Control being used. I’m using Neat Video’s plug-in (https://www.neatvideo.com) in AE.
Canon XH-A1 1440×1080 60i shot on DV tape. Captured in Premiere as HDV. Not using Cineform, HDVSplit or anything like that.
I know there are pitfalls to using HDV in AE and am not opposed to transcoding the raw mpeg files to a different, more ‘friendly,’ format. However, the tools available to me are all ‘out of the box’ with CS4.I want to avoid re-capturing the entire tapes as two of the tapes had damaged frames and syncing was extra time consuming.
Basically would like a review of my workflow and which method will achieve quicker results and if there’s any additional optimizing I can do to speed up the renders and playback.
I’ve tried using Dynamic Link from AE and importing the PPro sequence, 1) applying Neat Video to all the individual clips, 2) as an Adjustment Layer over those clips I know need the same filter settings. Both of those give an estimated render time of 90minutes per 5-minutes of footage using 1440×1080, No Compression and AVI format.
Secondly, tried sending a timeline from PPro using DL to AE and apply the effects then render final output in Premiere. Just the “render all effects in work area” is estimated at over 30 hours.
Haven’t got the project to a point to even attempt a complete export via AME from Premiere.At this point I’m also more than willing to down size from 1440×1080 to SD DV if there’s a logical way to retain “decent” quality and speed up this whole process.
Final delivery is web, DVD, and possible local cablecast.
Operating System and programs, and footage/project on one hard drive; disk cache on another.
I’ve read endless forums and Adobe Help pages including this one:
Improving performance info from Adobe
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WSF13D6BED-C53B-408a-B2D6-C8B4205D4FB7a.htmlWindows 7, 64-bit
AMD Phenom II X4 965
8GB RAMNVIDIA GeForce GT 440
Graphics clock: 810 MHz
Processor clock: 1620 MHz
Memory Clock: 1600 MHz (3200 MHz data rate)
Total available graphics memory: 4095MB
Dedicated video memory: 1024 GDDR5
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 3071 MBAfter Effects Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously settings:
Minimum allocation per CPU: 2GB
Foreground: 1.75GB
Background 4.24GB
Actual CPUs used: 2
CPUs to leave: 2
Prevent DLL Address Space Fragmentation is checked.Neat Video Performance Optimizing:
Use CPU and GPU with 4 Cores selected and 75% of available GPU memory. Shows 794MB available on GPU.Thank you for any and all help.
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3 Replies
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Honestly, I’ve read this twice and I’m not sure exactly what the question is. From what I understand, you are trying to render something and it is taking a long time, you would like a answer on how to speed it up so you don’t have to downsize the footage or recapture…
If time is very pressing then by first response would be that 8 gigs of ram and a 32 bit program (cs4) are not optimal. I’d upgrade your ram to AT LEAST 16 gigs (optimally 32) and download the trial of cs5.5 (64 bit) to get your render time down.
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Hi David,
The main question, based on my system specs, is do I have AE’s Multiprocessing setup logically?I understand the lack of RAM and working with long GOP footage in AE are bogging down the machine. In the short term I’m stuck with what my employer offers.
I’ll look into trying the CS5.5 trial, however I know the processors installed cannot take advantage of the Mercury Playback Engine.
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overall i think your settings are fairly good for what you have to work with.
neat video doesn’t seem to run well as an ae plugin… i’ve heard that it runs significantly faster in apps like virtual dub… my best guess is that it comes down to gpu optimization, and ae doesn’t make good use of the gpu. but you might search around for for more info on that, or getting better performance from within ae, i don’t have neat video personally.
down converting to sd would speed things up (roughly 6x). if your footage does not have a pulldown then setting ae to interpret it separating upper fields with the preserve edges option and dropping it into an sd widescreen comp and scaling it to fit should down convert it fairly well. you can probably speed things up further by rendering that down convert out to lossless animation or quicktime photo-jpeg (90-95 quality) and effecting the down convert in ae. you could also do the down convert with media encoder, and probably premiere (‘m not a premiere user).
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
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