HELP!!! HELP!!! Comp Size Limitation for Render in AE 6.5

[Ben G unguren]

Jay,

Can you provide the exact message that AE is giving you? What is the text of the error message?

After Effects can render up to 30,000 x 30,000 pixels. So the error as you describe it doesn’t make much sense. However, though AE can take it, your own computer may not be able to handle it. That is, you may need more memory. How much do you have installed at present? Memory is cheap, and if you only have, say, 512MB, then you may want to get another Gig and see if that helps, which it will. But whether or not it solves the problem….

If you can’t just up and get some memory (or borrow some from a friend, assuming you use the same kind), you could also try upstream rendering. That is, render our your large comps one at a time, then reimport them and replace the comps with the new movies (there’s a shortcut for this in the Output Module; I think it’s called “Import & Replace Footage” as a “post-render action”). In other words, After Effects is probably having a hard time calculating ALL your big comps at the same time. So give it to AE one piece at a time and hope it doesn’t choke. (And save a copy before you start).

ben

[Jay Blanchard]

Ben–

Thanks for the fast reply; I am at home now, so I can’t give the exact wording of the error, but I’ll post it tomorrow morning.

I tried rendering out a test comp at home that was twice the size of the one at work & it worked fine. Which leads me to believe it is more likely a memory error. I am running a dual 3GHz processor machine with 2GB of RAM installed though, so I don’t know if upping memory would help.

I’m going to try pre-rendering tomorrow to see if that works & I’ll post my results. Thanks again for your input; it’s greatly appreciated & will help me sleep soundly tonight with rendering error nightmares! 🙂

jay

[Todd Morgan]

what may be happening is AE is looking to render out your project and it guestimates how much file space it will need to render your movie file. unlike targa sequence where it will look for 1.3mb space, it is looking for maybe a gig or whatever final avi or quicktime size the project will end up at once completely rendered. if you try rendering a targa sequence and it starts to render without giving you that error, then you know it is a memory buffering problem where large movie files (avi, wmv, qt, mov, etc) will not be generate because AE thinks there will not be enough room in mem to create the temp file while rendering.

Todd

[Jay Blanchard]

It definitely looks like a memory issue–the error that I keep getting refers to AE not being able to create an image buffer for the precomps that I’m rendering out. Unfortunately, it’s not even allowing me to prerender them!

The strange thing is, I’ve been getting a second message saying “Memory requested=32101K Memory Available 30124K” I’m running 2GB of RAM, so I shouldn’t have an issue with it needing 32MB. Is there anyway that I can optimize my AE settings (or Windows settings–Virtual Memory maybe?) to help allocate resources to this render?

Thanks again for your help everyone.

[Jay Blanchard]

Well, so far so good–I rebooted the computer and I’m able to render the precomps now. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be camping out at the office tonight–I have an estimated 3.5 hour render for just a single five second background layer precomp (out of a 1min. 40sec. piece).

I’m guessing my long render time is a result of the comp size & effects–would I save a substantial amount of time if I turned off the motion blur?

[Todd Morgan]

Do you have any quicktime or movie files as sources?

[Jay Blanchard]

In the main comp, yes, all of my video files are QuickTimes. The main comp elements don’t seem to be giving me any issues though–it’s only crashing when it gets to the first frame of the big background precomps, which are all .AI files imported as comps & then animated.

After my current render finishes, I’m going to try to pre-render the next comp without motion blur to see the time difference. I’m guessing that’s what is causing the ridiculous render strain (my current comp has motion blur checked for every layer)

[Thehardmenpath]

Yeah, rather than removing ALL motion blur, try just unchecking the layers you don’t think will really need it. Motion blur increases the render time almost exponentially.

You could also try increasing the maximum memory usage, mine is currently at 120%, perhaps you could run AE at 2000% or so, I don’t know. Edit/preferences/memory&cache.

[Todd Morgan]

As a test, try rendering the main comp with only the .ai files visible. What happens?

[Jay Blanchard]

All right, so far, so good–I went back to each of my precomps and became more selective on what layers needed motion blur (it’s a bad habit of mine that I usually just turn on the blur for every layer on smaller projects–good lesson learned to stop doing that) and the renders are going MUCH faster now. I still haven’t rendered out the full comp, but all of the pre-renders are working fine & rendering quickly (10-30 minutes per comp) and the alphas seem to be transferring over fine to the main comp.

On another note, has anyone had any experience using the ReelSmart Motion Blur plug-in? Does it help lower render times?

Thank you to everyone for your help & advice; it’s greatly appreciated. Thank goodness for Creative Cow!

jay