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Proxies for large, many-layered photoshop files
So, I am working on a cartoon with photoshop backgrounds and illustrator characters. However, we are switching to HD right now and I am having a terrible time getting AE to load our background files. I think they might simply be too big. For example, one file I am working with is 10,084 x 4320 pixels. It just will not load so that I can actually see the file. What is the maximum pixel size of a file that AE can handle?
I was looking into using proxies, but I can seem to figure out a simple way to do it. You see, my characters need to interact with the background elements and also move around them (some in front, behind, etc.) You get the picture… anyway… is there a way to set proxies for every layer in an entire photoshop file, without doing it one layer at a time? Doing it one layer at a time is quite tedious, since some of my background files contain as many as 40-50 layers. I can create a scaled down version of the bg very easily, but then when I set it as a proxy, AE will only let me import it as footage, and not a composition. Does anyone know a way around this? Am I making sense at all? Sorry, it’s been a long day!
Thanks for any help!
Mack
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1 Reply
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This has been coming up a lot lately here on the cow. Even if you could get the proxie setup working to your liking, you wouldn’t be very stoked at render time when it simply refuses to do your bidding once the real files are inserted, and you have to scramble for a solution that doesn’t involve starting over from scratch.
In my experience, and from what a LOT of posts here have indicated, working with 10Kx4K PSDs with 40-50 layers is not practical in AE. Think of it like this – An uncompressed video file can be huge, 100GB even, but AE can handle it fine because the average data rate per frame is only around 2MB or so. With a Photoshop file, the burden on your machine is the size of the photoshop file per frame. If it’s a 100MB file, that’s 100MB per frame, the equivelent of having 50 different uncompressed videos stacked in your timeline and playing at once.
The datarate per frame is simply too massive, AE’s frame buffer will complain loudly with files of such large physical dimensions, and you will lose all interactivity as the program struggles to handle it all. Even with proxies, once the real elements are swapped in you will be lucky (to say the least) if it actually renders without throwing constant errors, much less finishes rendering sometime this year.Here’s a few options:
– In Photoshop, output each layer to its own file as a PNG with alpha. Reassemble in AE comps. Depending on what these elements are, this could be enough on its own by reducing your total data rate needs considerably.
– Any files that HAVE to be so physically large should probably be broken apart, in Photoshop, into smaller segments that are then output to PNG format and then reassembled into one big comp within AE. This way you still have your high res plates, but each individual chunk will not strain the frame buffer limitations so hard.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com
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