Only one processor Rendering

[Matt Callac]

Just tested a render on another project, and it accesses all the processors on the machine.

this is really weird.

-mattyc

[John Cuevas]

There are some effects that don’t support multi-processor rendering, that might be something to investigate.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Matt Callac]

all the effects are one’s i use all the time.

in each comp there’s:
adjustment layer with
add grain
ramp
levels
calculations

adjustment layer with Curves.

within the comp or pre comps these are the other filters
CC Repetile
tint
stroke

I can’t imagine any of those filters would be causing the problem.

-mattyc

[Darby Edelen]

More information might help us figure out the problem.

What version of After Effects is this? How many aeselflink processes do you see in Activity Monitor? What is the memory usage for the AE and associated processes?

This answer is a long shot: if you’re using CUDA accelerated ray-tracing in CS6 then AE is limited to one process.

Darby Edelen

[Matt Callac]

[Darby Edelen] “What version of After Effects is this?”

5.5

[Darby Edelen] “How many aeselflink processes do you see in Activity Monitor?”

Not sure what an aeselflink process is. the information showing in the activity monitor (for AE) is as follows
PID: 288 Process name Adobe After Effects10.5 %CPU 123% Threads: 66 Real Mem 7.85 GB

[Darby Edelen] “What is the memory usage for the AE and associated processes?”

nothing else is using anymore than 150 MB of ram. I’m not running much other than AE.

and nope not ray trace as i’m in 5.5

thanks
-mattyc

[Darby Edelen]

[Matt Callac] “Not sure what an aeselflink process is.”

Sorry, I may have misunderstood the problem. Do you have “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” enabled in the Memory & Multiprocessing preferences? If you do then AE should load a process named “aeselflink” for each processor you have available based on your Memory & Multiprocessing settings.

Additionally, some effects disable Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously. According to the AE help these include:

Auto Color
Auto Contrast
Auto Levels
Cartoon
Lens Blur
Particle Playground
Shadow/Highlight

The sampleImage(); expression as well as some 3rd party effects also disable Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously.

If, however, you’re not using Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously then it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on inside the black box 🙂

Darby Edelen

[Matt Callac]

Currently render multiple frames simultaneously is off. When it’s on, It’s a very similar situation. I’ve tried rendering on three different machines. All with the same result. For some reason this project and every comp in it cannot render using all the processors. I’ve gutted and reduced the project to one of my scene comps and gotten rid of everything that isn’t internally generated by AE.

I’ve turned off all effects. Even deleted every except the camera, and though it does render much faster without any layers, it still doesn’t ever use all processors at once. The most the CPU% hits is like 180.

This is just crazy.

I have the project gutted to where it’s just internal AE things if anyone has time to take a look and see if they can figure it out.

-mattyc

[Andrew Somers]

If render multiple frames simultaneously is off then you will not be using all processors. It must be ON, and you must have enough RAM for each process, etc etc.

What machine and OS are you running, how many physical cores, and how much RAM do you have?

[Matt Callac]

No, render multiple frames simultaneously simply allows the program to assign different cores to render different frames. If it’s not on. It’s still using all of your processors, but it’s using them to render each frame individually (not multiple at the same time).

But to answer your question

Mac OSX 10.7.2

8 cores 16 GB.

I’ve tired rendering this on several different machines and all yield the same results.

Here’s a snapshot (maybe, I don’t really know how to use the cow’s file uploader).
https://f1.creativecow.net/4390/cpu-usage-during-render?uploaded=file

[Kevin Camp]

[Matt Callac] “If it’s not on. It’s still using all of your processors”

that’s true for multi-threaded processes in ae, but not all processes are multi-threaded. using the ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’ option allows you to use multiple cores more often, but as has been noted, there are still exceptions.

it’s hard to tell what’s breaking the multi-frame rendering or the multi-threaded processes… you’d need to go through a comp layer by layer and doing a test render to find out which layer(s) are causing the issue. then you may even need to go through effect by effect to find out if it is an effect.

there is a thorough list of bundled effects and other things that break multi-frame rendering in the online manual, but i don’t know that i’ve come across a list of processes that would break other multi-threaded processes.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW