Motion 4 Not Performing as well as I hoped

[Terry Mikkelsen]

What are the specs of the motion project?
Do you have field rendering, motion blur and/or frame blending on?
Is your render quality draft, normal or best?

I remember way back in the early days of AE, as each advancement came along we would swear we would never have to work a 1/2 or 1/4 resolution ever again. But, of course, we just keep loading on more and more intense effects which causes our slow downs again.

As far as the final render – I have had better luck submitting it through compressor to the local cluster. Sometimes it doesn’t make a bit of difference, but most of the time it is a bit faster. (plus it frees up Motion to do other work)

Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com

[Evan Smith]

Motion Project is
DVCPRO HD 720p60
960×720
8 bit
Frame blending is on, the others are not
Render is normal at half resolution

I didn’t know you could use compressor, I’ll give it a shot. Does my hardware seem like it should be able to handle this load?

[Terry Mikkelsen]

I don’t think that you can expect real-time playback. When you are working on the project turn off the layers that are not necessary to make the adjustments. Turn off reflections and frame blending until final render. Also trim back layers that aren’t seen. (if you have a layer that is not seen by the camera, the computer still needs to keep track of it and its effects)

I have a new MacPro that I can max out in a heartbeat with just a few layers if I am really pushing the effects and the render settings. Its easy to do. It doesn’t mean that the computer is junk, more like my expectations are too high. But even though I have a new computer, I just got it a month or so ago and the computer it replaced is a G5 2×2.0GHz. I’ve obviously have used it for a good number of years and it is still in service. So yes, you have a good computer, but your expectations need to be inline with what it is capable of doing.

Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com

[Zak Peric]

Look, no matter how powerful your computer is or your graphic card for that matter you will always have the slow down on performance of motion.

Few things you need to do to make it work.

Always trim your work area only to the area you are working on.
Make sure your settings are as in previous post. Reflections off until you want to make final render.

Also I found that at times Motion uses robs RAM. So delete the preferences and restart the motion.

I also found that some filters are extremely difficult to handle like Noise Filter. See my video tutorial for Cross Processing at https://www.embryo.me.uk.

Also learn how to BAKE your layers, there is no need to use all of your assets as they are, if you are sure that you are finished with certian layers BAKE them, one by one. This can be done by going to FILE and exporting Selection, then make sure you select option AFTER EXPORT-IMPORT INTO PROJECT.

Also test the filters you have applied I know that some are very processor intensive. Switch them off one by one, that is the only way to know which one is killing your computer.

I hope this helps

[Noah Kadner]

I’d guess the stills are way too high resolution- remember everything has to fit into RAM. Try resizing to just what you need and save as PNG.

Noah

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