Render time! Please help

[Steve Roberts]

How many layers are in the comp?
How many of them have effects applied?
How big are the biggest layers? 2000×2000?

The remaining render time is based on the current frame rendering. If it’s an easy frame, AE will think the render will be done soon. So, if the frames after the first estimate were more complex than those rendering at the time of the first estimate, the first estimate will be revised upwards to account for that.

Try twirling down the “render details” triangle (in the queue) when rendering. See what your bottleneck is. Some effects are render hogs.

Steve

[Scott Frizzle]

One of the most important things that you can do on big, render intensive projects is to do an “optimization pass” before the final render. This is where you go through and scrutinize each layer of the project and see what can be made more efficient for the render. As Steve said, large image/ footage files can be a real render hog, especially if they have a lot of effects on them or if they are 3d layers with motion blur turned on. If you have large files like this, make sure you actually need them to be that big. Often I’ll create images at a large size just in case, but in the final design they end up taking up a small amount of space somewhere in the background of the animation. This would be a case where you would want to replace those big files with a smaller version. Also, check to see if you have a lot of layers with the same effect applied to them, for instance, 10 background layers all with a Gaussian blur applied to them. You could get rid of all the individual blurs and either precomp those layers and apply a single Gaussian blur, or use an adjustment layer to do the same. I realize this is too late now, but as you’re buliding the file it helps to pre render the things that you don’t think are going to change later on. For instance, if you have a background layer with 12 filters on it that’s killing your render time, pre render it and bring it back in as footage so save time as you are working.

Those are just a few suggestions, but I’m sure you’ll come up with more if you really dig into your file. There’s almost always a way to achieve the same effect with a more efficient render.

[Rdub]

My comps are 720X480. I’m pre rendering the individual comps now. I’ll try bringing them back as footage before rendering the entire project. The one comp has 7 layers including light and camera.

[Yoondo]

That is outrageous. I don’t care how mamy plugins you’ve used and it’s only 720×480.
I’d say there has to be some other issue with your system.

[Rdub]

So would I. I’ve been rendering the first comp for about 7 hours now and it’s not finished. It indicates there is about 2 1/2 hours left.

[Joe Chao]

Pay attention to the effects you have applied.
Did you main 3D Invigorator by “Invigorator” ?It can often be a render hog.It always require so much time to render especially if you were making a complex shape.If the laye applied with this plugin did not have many action in 3D sence(for example:rotation),you’d better render the layer into a still image and replace the layer with the still image,and adjust motion of it.Then you would find the render time would be greatly reduced.

Digital Anarchy is probably the second render hog.It cost too much time sometimes.

Light Factory usually do not require too much time to render,except in case that I require toooooooooo many light effects.

In one word,AE some time works like a little fool,It do not know how to save time.So you must find out what is wrong and help AE to overcome it.By the way,I think that the best work is not the one with the most effects.Before you applied an effect to your work,make sure if it is necessary.

Wish to be helpful.

****************************
My name is always misread as COW……..:)
so I got this ID:
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[Scott Frizzle]

Bill, I think you should post your project if that’s possible (I know this can be tough as far as clients are concerned.) I’d be happy to take a look at it and I’m sure several others would as well.