Kinda OT: Sheer video

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Why did you assume using Sheer would speed up renders?

While it is true that Sheer is very fast at both encoding at decoding, the truth is that in a 14 hr render, only a tiny amount goes to encoding. Most of it just image processing.

Lossless codecs like Sheer are about reduced file size, not reduced rendering time 🙂

[Malcolm Desoto]

okay, okay. Sorry, I’m still kind of getting my head around some of the technical aspects of encoding. I guess I was confusing render time with the time it’s actually encoding?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Malcolm:
An encoding application (say, Sorenson Squeeze, Canopus Procoder, Apple Compressor, etc) takes a *finished* video source file and just takes care of encoding it to a different format/codec/size combination.

A content-creation application (like After Effects) also has to encode when you export. But it’s only one of many things in the processing pipe: depending on which features you used in your composition, it spends most of the time computing things like spatial transforms, effects, masks, speed changes, motion blur, etc for each frame. Encoding is the last thing it does for each of these frames.

If the Composition is really simple to process, then I guess the efficiency of this or that encoder could make a more obvious difference. Say, AE will take 1:50 mins instead of 2:00 mins because of this. Another case would be if you’re using really gigantic frames originated in film and scanned at 2K/4K resolution: with such things, the decoding/encoding stages (and hard disk speed) could become a more significant factor.

However, a composition that takes 14 hours to render… it is unlikely that it’s spending such a long time encoding. About 99 per cent of the time is most likely just performing the image processing/data crunching required for each frame.

BTW, how did you get a comp to take 14 hours? I don’t think I’ve seen those rendering times for AE, in years.

Hope this helps…

[Malcolm Desoto]

Thanks for the clarification.

The project has alot of 3D elements, particle effects, moving cameras, etc. It was a fairly complex spot with alot of large files ans I was rendering out at full quality with no compression.

Still, I don’t know if that’s a normal render time.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Well, yes, that sounds like something that may take a long time.
But in 2007, a long time means an hour or two (depending on duration, of course).

Is it CS3? If so, do you have a multi-core computer? If so, did you enable simultaneous frame rendering in preferences? Just that by itself may lower the render times a lot if you have enough RAM.

From your description of the project, it may be a good workflow practice to pre-render some pre-comps (particles, for example) and use them as proxies…. A proxy is a pre-rendered item that works instead (but not in an irreversible way) of an original (usually, render intensive) element.

Take a look at the “Work with placeholders and proxies” section of AE Help:

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WSB356ACD2-AF59-4604-B378-31D687DB5ACC.html

[Malcolm Desoto]

okay, it’s a 30 sec spot. I’m using AE Pro 7.

I always use proxies when possible.

System specs:

AMD Dual core 2.8
Nvidia 7600
4 GB RAM
I’ll have to check my preferences again to make sure simultaneous frame rendering is enabled.

Thanks for the link.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

“‘ll have to check my preferences again to make sure simultaneous frame rendering is enabled.”

This setting (and more importantly, the feature itself) doesn’t exist in AE 7. It’s one of the big, new features in CS3.

To take advantage of multiple, simultaneous frame rendering you would have to upgrade to CS3 or get Nucleo/Nucleo Pro.

Other than that, I understand AE is tuned more specifically for Intel processors. But of course, this by itself doesn’t lead to 14 hour renders 🙂

[Malcolm Desoto]

Gotchya!

Thanks for the input.