-
How do you really know? (multiprocessing)
This is a question about multiple processor rendering…how do I really know?
The first time I used the AE8 beta — and had turned on multiprocessor rendering — I noticed how the frames were rendered discontiguously. I thought well that’s not ideal, but its a heck of a lot FASTER.
Now when I render a preview in the shipping version of AE8 it renders just like normal…in a linear fashion…one frame after another.
This started me thinking…
How do I KNOW that my multiple cores are actually getting utilized? It was obvious in the beta but know I can’t tell. Did the Adobe team ‘fix’ the previews to render in a linear fashion?FYI…My machine is 4 core with 5 gigs of RAM. Preferences are set appropriately.
-
4 Replies
-
Assuming you’re on OSX (you didn’t say) activate the OSX Activity Monitor. On Windows, use the Task Manager.
I don’t know about contiguous rendering, sorry.
-
The activity monitor shows multiple items called aeselflink — 4 copies…so that seems to tell me something!…yet I’m still slightly unsettled about utilization in my previews…because it was so obvious with the beta how it was using the four cores–and it just isn’t now…
When I say “discontigous rendering” I’m just hacking my own term for this:
see linked visual explanation:
https://www.access2interactive.com/mult_rendering.jpgThis is what I would see when doing previews with the AE8 beta. It doesn’t render like that now.
-
OK…I watched the activity monitor DURING a preview and yes I can see it’s utilizing 70-95% of each of the four processors.
-
There is a setting in the multiple processor preferences to render multiple frames simultaneously, this gives that ‘discontiguous’ feeling to the render. If you don’t enable it, AE will use each core/processor to process different parts of the same frame so the preview/render should still be faster. I don’t know exactly what this means in terms of the benefit of this setting…
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up