Help !! 16 bpc not real time preview

[Darby Edelen]

[Andres Bocan] “Is it possible and correct to work on 8 bits for compositing purposes and do the render at 16 or 32 bpc??”

No, you would be better off doing your compositing at higher bit depths and then rendering to a lower bit depth.

In order to gain more time for your RAM preview try reducing the preview resolution of your composition (at full? go to half, at half? go to third).

Also, post your Memory & Cache settings for us.

After reading your post again I see that you are still able to load 5-6 seconds into RAM, but it doesn’t preview smoothly… Do you experience problems in other applications? Are you using OpenGL?

Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Andres Bocan]

Well:

I am aware that I may have done troubles with ram and cache because trying to tweak this I increase ram maximun to 200% and max disk cache to 100% or 130 I don’t rememeber very well I have to check it out later.

I don’t experience problems in other applications because the machine is new and I have just tested the after effects.

I can’t use open GL because working on AE CS3 with multiprocessor enable, the software tell me that open GL is not supported to work.

[Kevin Camp]

you have plenty of ram, so increasing your max memory usage to 200% won’t really help. the max memory that the ae application can address is 3gb, so set it back to the default 120%.

for the max ram cache setting, again you have plenty of ram, so i would set that to the default 60%. the ram cache is used for ram previews, but if you get this setting too high you typically run into problems, like ram fragmentation and restricting ram for other purposes like the image buffer.

enable disk cache and set the cache folder to a drive that is on a separate controller form your media. so if your media is on your raid (i’m sure it is), then set it to use the main drive or a drive that is not on your raid controller. the default is 2gb, if you have the space you can easily up that to 20gb.

another thing that can effect ram preview playback speeds is if you have ae set to playout to a broadcast monitor. i know with my sd decklink card, in ae’s video preview preference, if i have ae set up to play out using ‘most accurate’ and have any scaling compensation done (like i’m working in widescreen, but the monitor is 4:3 so the picture needs to get letter boxed) then i won’t get realtime play back, unless i go into the video preview settings and make adjustments to the video output.

you can easily test this just by disabling video preview to the broadcast monitor.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Jan Sherlink]

Just done a little testing;

1920×1080@8bit: 14seconds07frames ram preview realtime at 25fps
1920×1080@16bit: 07seconds02frames ram preview realtime at 25fps
1920×1080@32bit: 03seconds14frames ram preview NOT realtime at 22fps

Running a:
Quadcore Q6600@3GHz, 8GB Ram, Geforce8600, 2TB Raid0, 2x24inch.

Remember that AE on OSX can use 3GB Ram while AE on Windows64 can use 4GB, I think the extra GB makes a lot of difference.
And if I enable my Blackmagic Intensity in After Effects, I get no realtime-preview at all in HD.

cya,

Jan

[Andres Bocan]

Hey Jan:

I am just waiting my intensity pro to see my previews in better Quality.
If I am not going to get realtime previews in my HD project why will I purchase it ? is it worthwhile ?

Andres

Andres Bocan
Visual Effects Supervisor
Pol-ka Producciones
Argentina

[Andres Bocan]

Kevin:

If it is so difficult to have real time previews in full quality at 100% size how do you do to test your final render before deliver to the following step ? In my case ON LINE editing.
I thought this MACPRO was powerfull enough to carry out this project.

I am waiting my intensity pro and I have already purchase a viewsonic real 1920×1080 with HDMI Input. Is it worthwhile ?
Will I have realtime previews with this ?

Another thing I just recently tested is that if I turn on color managment to much my output solor space, HD the ram preview are even slower.

Thanks
Andres

[Jan Sherlink]

The strange thing is;
The Blackmagic-Intensity card can output Uncompressed 10bit 4.4.4 in Première without a single hicup (If you have a fast Raid)
What helps me, is disabling the video preview and using Targa-sequences as output in After Effects,
this way you can render small parts and check the online directly in Première.
Sad, about the intensity,
my old Matrox PArhelia AVP ran Full HD in Real Time.

cya,

Jan

[Andres Bocan]

and what about HDLink? it seems to be better. What do you know about it ?

Andres

Andres Bocan
Visual Effects Supervisor
Pol-ka Producciones
Argentina

[Jan Sherlink]

As far as I know,
HDLINK only gives you the possibility to convert your SDI signal to DVI or HDMI, so you still need a blackmagic Decklink to output your video.
Even the Decklink HD-card didn’t alow me to do a real-time HD preview in After Effects.
in other words… my good old Parhelia AVPe still outperforms blackmagic cards (in AE)

so right now there doesn’t seem to be a solution 🙁

cya,

Jan