Image Buffer issue – deadline please help

[Robert Morris]

Pre-rendering is basically the answer until Adobe releases 64-bit CS5. And even then I’m sure pre-rendering will be used in real production scenarios where time and resources are pushed to the brink. Even if the large image that is giving you problems is not inside a precomp, you can solo it (or a group of layers) and pre-render them by themselves. I use this technique in 1920×1080 productions all the time. Just as long as the layers you are pre-rendering aren’t using any blending modes or effects that rely on an interaction with layers you are not pre-rendering. It’s tough if the client requests changes, but a lot of time (and experience) has taught me which layers I can prerender in groups, anticipating which ones the client is most likely to “tweak”. For pre-render settings, I use still frames (PSD files) rendered at full resolution, uncompressed. Personally, I’d almost rather render to PNG files, as they are smaller, but I’ve heard that they are a lossy compression. I don’t think that’s true, but for pre-renders you don’t want to take a chance on anything getting compressed. Also, you may want to look into background rendering, as it uses less resources. AEScripts.com has a great script for making the whole background render process so completely simple, that you’ll wonder how you did without it.

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