Puppet Tool and HD format quality of video is poor

[Joe Moya]

Stock answer doesn’t work this time…

Upscaling doesn’t work if you go from a smaller pixel dimensioned sized original to a close camera shot (i.e., zoom)… however, it works fine if you have a detailed enough original source…. which is why the original source created in PSP is matched to the AE comps comp size settings.

I think the bottom line is that Adobe products in general don’t work well with HD anything. And for that matter, there aren’t many compositing packages that do very well with HD size work that gets complicated and lengthy. (…heaven forbid if you work with RED files). So… I guess it’s really best to say that 1440×1080 size comps are bad for RAM intensive user like After Effects…but, works “OK”/better in Nuke (and, I hear Combustion as well).

At any rate…

The render solution is to eliminate the use of OpenGL when using certain combination of Render Composition Settings.

The combination that works is Quality Settings with Resolution Full (or current settins IF the settings in the comp are Full)…. other combination with or without OpenGL doesn’t work with the Puppet Tool (…see my guess as to why this happens below).

Bottom line:

This problem is pretty much another example of OpenGL not working with certain effects (such as Movie Looks… which comes first to mind). And, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the camera zoom. In fact, what I think is happening is that the memory buffer is going from “best” compressor option to an “adaptive” filter to compensate for memory overload from compressing a large frame using Puppet Tool. This is why forcing the render settings to “full” keeps the compressor set to “best”. This “full/best” to “adaptive” compression change caused by the Puppet Tool results in a degradation in the frame quality… it is not the zoom.

Now, my problem is working with 9 hr. long render times for a 1 min. 20 sec. video without OpenGL active… all because of one effect – Puppet Tool. I am still scratching my head on solving the long render time problem.

Any suggestions? …looking at using cineform… but, don’t have any experience with that application. In the past my very beefy render computer/mini render farm hasn’t had any significant problems until this complex animation project showed up (and, it’s a 2D ANIMATION – no less… ugh… I haven’t had problems with my 3D animations like I have had with this 2D project). I guess I need to get more experience with AE and 2D animation stuff…. for the past 4 days, I’ve been getting waaay more experience that I ever wanted.

FWIW Joe

[Joe Moya]

Well… if I am using temporal footage… then, After Effects created it…

This is a 100% AE created footage. The source is a PSP file… that’s it. ALL animation is created with the Puppet Tool and Camera movements… there is NO other source of animation in this project (temporal or othewise).

The slow render or failure to render is caused by these effect elements:

1) top on the list… and major cause… Puppet Tool.
2) followed by: Shadows, Color Correction, Lights, and Camera.

The slow render time and poor quality of results is caused by OpenGL in combination with the Puppet Tool.

This loss of quality could be caused by the video source… but, if it is it… then it was created by Adobe since there is no external animation used except what is done by AE. Somehow I doubt this, since I have a perfectly nice HD quality output when I eliminated the OpenGL in combination with Puppet Tool…OpenGL works nicely until it hit the frame where the Puppet Tool effect is applied. To me, this rules out temporal compressed footage (…much less the fact there is NO externally created footage used).

I am not looking for instantanious anything… but, I certainly am not expecting total render failures or loss of quality in video either… which is what happens when I try to do the project in a simple and typical AE work flow. A LOT of juggling around of this project has been done just to get it to render to a final format in HD quality.

The final result seems to be this… Puppet Tool dumb downs the video quality when rendering approaches max. memory useage during render (..in fact, the actual error message during render indicates the fault to be blur… but no blurs are used… nor DOF).

The way to over come this render failure and/or poor quality render results is to fix the compression settings as “Full” (or “Current Settings” if Full is chosen in the project)… “Best” settings does not work because… (I’m guessing) is that it defaults to an “Adaptive” resolution/compression to save memory. The “Adaptive/Dumb Downed” resolution reduces the videos quality (and, not a by product of the zooming of camera).

Of course, this “Full” resolution typically results in render failures because of low memory. The solution this problem is to go to the Secret Pref. and purge the video frames. The net results is a nice looking video that takes a very long time to render. I can handle long renders, but failure to render is a bit hard to deal with…

More RAM would be great, except for one big limitation. The max. amount of RAM that can be used with a 32bit XP is 3G’s… I currently have 6G of low latency RAM in Dual Quad 7i 3.2Ghz chip in an ASUS mobo using Adaptec Raid Controllers with Dual RAID 0 setups with 15k rpm Fujitsu e-sata HD’s. Just short of a full fledge Render Farm… you can’t get a faster CPU, Raid Controller and HD combination than what I use. 64 bit will take care of the RAM issue in the future…but, until then… everyone is stuck with 32bit with 3G limit of RAM. AE biggest limitation is that it very RAM dependent. And, with HD size frames this poses big problems.

As for solving the long render time problem with the RAM-use intensive Puppet Tool is not truely solveable unless you want crappy looking results that is created when using OpenGL. I think Adobe has a lot of issues to work out with regard to HD stuff… and, quite honestly other compositing software can do a marginally better job dealing with HD assuming you have the hardware to work with HD source media. Hopefully, CS5 may have a better handle on HD size file (or, not… lot depends upon how the competitors deal with the same 64 bit change).

[Joe Moya]

Crap!!!… I have GOT to get a new pair of glasses…

I just realized that I consitently made the mistake in my posts of reference PSP instead of what I meant… I meant PSD … NOT PSP… ugh! Frustration is getting the best of me… for sure.

The animated character was created in Adobe’s Photoshop… The animation was done on a Photoshop file in AE using the Puppet Tool.

I have been lost for the past 5 days trying to figure this thing out… but through LOTS of trial and error… it appears to be a combination “OpenGL and RAM Memory Limits” when dealing with HD qualilty with AE. It was an issue that had a ton of various potential solutions once the problem was identified (which is no simple task by itself).

IMHO, this sort of problem is caused by AE’s inability to effectively use and handle Hard Drive cached memory in lieu of RAM memory. And, with large Hi. Def. video files and frame sizes this becomes a bigger issue once the project starts to grow in length.

The good news is that I fixed it and the cause was isolated to exactly what I have previously posted as a solution… or else, the problem would still exist.

Lesson learned… be very careful when building long projects that use HD size frames when using the Puppet Tool. If anything, these series of posts may be useful to some other poor soul who unwittingly delves into the dark world of HD 2D animation using Adobe’s Puppet Tool in CS4.