Brian Charles
Forum Replies Created
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The graphics card plays no significant role in rendering. OpenGL is troublesome in After Effects, it can speed some aspects of 3D previews such as lights and shadows, and while it is possible to render an OpenGL preview, its not recommended since quality suffers.
As for SSD’s they are great for speedy launch of applications (I have one as a boot drive on my MacPro) but do nothing at all for renders. Render and preview speeds are primarily affected by processor speed ,number of processors, and RAM. The more of all the better. That said, some effects, footage and comps are computationally more expensive than others and will render more slowly.
I’m currently on a 12 core MacPro with 32 GB of RAM. Previously I was on an 8 core with 16GB. Subjectively measured, the 12 core is about 30% faster than the 8 core. I haven’t bothered to do rigorous testing.
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The graphics card plays no significant role in rendering. OpenGL is troublesome in After Effects, it can speed some aspects of 3D previews such as lights and shadows, and while it is possible to render an OpenGL preview, its not recommended since quality suffers.
As for SSD’s they are great for speedy launch of applications (I have one as a boot drive on my MacPro) but do nothing at all for renders. Render and preview speeds are primarily affected by processor speed ,number of processors, and RAM. The more of all the better. That said, some effects, footage and comps are computationally more expensive than others and will render
I’m currently on a 12 core MacPro with 32 GB of RAM. Previously I was on an 8 core with 16GB. Subjectively measured, the 12 core is about 30% faster than the 8 core. I haven’t bothered to do rigorous testing.
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Dave is right, however you *may* be able to render if you change how frequently memory is purged during render.
To do this you need to access the “Secret Preferences” and change how frequently memory is purged.
To access the Prefs you hold down the Shift key on your keyboard while choosing Preferences>General from the menu.
See:
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I hope FCP 8 is 64 bit, that would be the most significant change.
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As much as you can afford. Though don’t expect miracles in every instance. When it comes to rendering / preview speed RAM is only one factor. The nature of your Comp, the type of footage, the type of effects etc make a dramatic difference to what renders quickly and what doesn’t. Read Tod’s post thoroughly, its full of good advice.
I have a 2.66 12 core with 32 GB (8*4GB sticks), and would like more, though 32 is plenty for now. I notice that some Comps preview faster with MP off and others benefit from MP being on. I have the Throttle panel from aescripts.com to turn it on and off without going to the Preferences pane.
What I *do* notice is that I can preview much longer sections of my Comp. I’ve got MP using 18 of the 24 cores that After Effects sees, really 9 cores multi-threaded. I leave 8 GB free for other apps. Sufficient for Photoshop and Illustrator.
It takes a while when previewing to spawn all the background thread and there is a noticeable delay when I press 0 to RAM preview. The more processes, the longer the delay.
Render speed would be faster with a 2.93 when there is heavy computational work, but my budget was limited so I opted for the 2.66
C4D is very quick on the 12 core.
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Without seeing exactly what you’re doing I can only guess that the replacement footage is a different size from the solids layers you’re replacing.
If all you want to do is create a cylinder or circle of layers why not use NAB scripts to help you?
https://www.nabscripts.com/downloads_en.html
See what you can do:
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Pretty clear, duplicate then offset the layer, then parent it to the first layer. Now duplicate the parented layer and hold down the option key to tie it to the previous layer and it offsets.
In the attached video the option/alt key is held down for parenting the subsequent duplicate layers.
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After Effects has adjustment layers but they differ from Photoshop’s in one significant way. They apply to *all* layers below and cannot be clipped to a single layer. You can mask the adjustment layer (similar to a vector mask in PS) to affect only specific areas of the layers beneath or use a Track matte (similar to a pixel based mask) on the Adjustment layer.
For Adjustment layers see:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e98a.html
For Track Mattes see:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7cf9a.html
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Use a hold keyframe, or change the interpolation method to linear.
Review the Help file to learn the variety of keyframe types and how to control them.
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d94a.html
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The cross-platform transfer should’t make a difference.
You say you “turn down the levels”, is the audio clipping?
If the original recording is above 0db, it’s clipping and will distort no matter what you do.