Render Estimates

[Audrey Paranuik]

usually it will tell you in the FAR right corner

however , thru past experience found that time a BIT OFF!

enjoy yourself
boyz

eating fondu, full
mmm

mon 10 hr shifts GOD//wish working on your dbl screens!!italy,,>>

[Erik Rosenbluh]

I’m using the Terminal to render. You’re referring to rendering inside After Effects.

[Tom Daigon]

What is the Terminal? That is software I am not familiar with.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
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[Erik Rosenbluh]

Are you running a Mac or PC, cuz the terminal is a utility in the Mac OS. Supposed to be faster for rendering AE projects?

[Tom Daigon]

Oh, that Terminal. Im on a PC (HP Z820) . I use Adobe Media Encoder (which Adobe suggests as an alternative to just exporting from AE) and I get fast export times, of course depending on what the nature of the comps are.

I havent heard any info about using Terminal to export from AE at all.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Ridley Walker]

Tom:

See this for more info on Terminal Rendering

https://lesterbanks.com/2012/04/how-to-render-after-effects-projects-using-the-terminal/

[Ridley Walker]

I’m not aware of any method for Terminal to estimate render times.

The Terminal render method I’m familiar with invokes the After Effects Render Engine but without a front end GUI which is what one sees in AE.

Perhaps some clever scripter could write a hook that polls the Render Engine for an estimated render time.

I’ve found those times wildly inaccurate since AE seems to guess based on the time it takes to render the current frame and assumes that all future frames will take as long.

An alternative is to use Adobe Media Encoder to render, which still allows you to work in AE while AME renders in the background.

Of course YMMV depending on the nature of the render and the hardware specs.

[Tom Daigon]

Thanks for the link Ridley. Looks interesting but nothing I would need in my work flows.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Darby Edelen]

[Ridley Walker] “I’ve found those times wildly inaccurate since AE seems to guess based on the time it takes to render the current frame and assumes that all future frames will take as long.”

I believe it’s based on the current average frame render time rather than the current frame only.

Render time of all previous frames / the number of frames currently rendered * the number of remaining frames = your estimated time remaining.

Still not entirely accurate, but close if your render has a relatively constant render load across its duration.

Darby Edelen

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Rosenbluh] “I’ve been using the Terminal to make my renders out of AE, but it doesn’t give me an estimate on how long the render should take. Is it enough time to take a shower, go to the movies, or visit the Galapagos?”

As the others have mentioned, there’s no way I’m aware of to estimate render time from the command line. If you rendered to an image sequence, you might be able to hack something together that counts the number of rendered and written frames in the output folder, looks at the total render time so far, and extrapolates to the total number of frames in the project (this should provide similar results to the Ae render estimate per Darby).

However, may I ask why you are rendering with the command line versus rendering in the GUI? If you want to render something in the background while you work in the foreground, have you seen Ae CS6’s new “Cache work area in background” feature [link]?

Walter Soyka
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