rendering debate

[Andrew Kramer]

Well on a basic observation. Having a large project loaded into ram may yield less ram for rendering so perhaps a slower render.

But I think the real reason to have multiple projects for various shots is for versioning, and potential errors. I think many of us have had a corrupt project file that won’t open. By separating your work you’re more likely to maintain most of your work if this occurs. Also as for versioning, you can save multiple copies of particular shot as you work and return to a specific state in the process.

Lastly if you are working with multiple artist they can work on specific shots and finish them in one project. Otherwise you would have to update your project with new versions of comps and import massive projects that get bigger and bigger and the next thing you know the project isn’t opening and ahhHHh!

[Todd Kopriva]

The quick answer: You’re right on the specifics… but your friend has a point, too.

As Andrew suggests, the real performance gains of keeping your projects broken up into multiple, smaller project files are not decreased rendering times; they are gains from avoiding the pain of having one corrupt project file ruin all of your work, et cetera. Workflow improvements are as valuable as render time improvements in saving you time and effort.

Regarding the specific question of whether render time increases because you have a bunch of other compositions and footage items in your project other than the one that you’re rendering: You could test this and settle the debate for yourself. That’s the only way that you and your friend are going to be really satisfied of the truth, right?

I just did a test, and I verified the answer that I (almost certainly) knew to be true: Having a lot of compositions and footage items in the Project panel and Render Queue panel does not affect the render time of another composition.

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Todd Kopriva
Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’
After Effects Help on the Web
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[Sarah Adina smith]

Thanks for the imput everyone!

Yeah, I tested it too and found no difference either. But I think I’ll have to get him in here to witness the test to make it official.

Good points about the workflow and avoiding corruption . . .

I suppose I like having one big AE file because I tend to reuse and borrow from other compositions and its nice to have them all there and not have to constantly import projects . . . its like they end up being combined anyway with all the imports I do.

Anyway, I think I at least sort of win the debate on technical grounds, even if breaking up the project into smaller projects is the right thing to do for workflow.

[Steve Roberts]

Don’t forget to save incrementally.

[Darby Edelen]

[Andrew Kramer] “But I think the real reason to have multiple projects for various shots is for versioning, and potential errors. I think many of us have had a corrupt project file that won’t open. By separating your work you’re more likely to maintain most of your work if this occurs. Also as for versioning, you can save multiple copies of particular shot as you work and return to a specific state in the process.”

I like to use AE’s Auto-Save feature to keep 3 backups of the file I’m working on. Getting burned once by a corrupt project file was enough for me =)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA