[Ferenc Van der velde]

Roei and Dan, you’re geniuses! This is something I couldn’t wrap my head around for years. I always did wat you describe only soon to realise that the loop was broken. I always ended up by just duplicating the layer a few times, but your timeline becomes a mess this way. Now I finally can loop the loop without blank or skipping frames!

[Ferenc Van der velde]

The fine people at MekaJiki RenderGarden pointed out that the project settings on my iMac had GPU Acceleration enabled where my Macbook creates every new project with Software Rendering enabled. So switching to software rendering did the trick. Hyper-threaded network rendering at last!

[Ferenc Van der velde]

You’re right, they’re not exactly identical, but in terms of CPU/GPU heaviness they are. The projects are just for testing purposes. I’m trying to run RenderGarden on both my machines and my Macbook gives this GPU error every time. At first I thought it was due to the fairly complex project I’m working on, so I ended up with these simple test cases of which I’m sure my Macbook can handle.

Working in 32 bit would be nice, but when you’re working in 6000×6000 with a lot of layers then 8 bit is far more manageable both in render times as in prerender file sizes.

[Ferenc Van der velde]

Both projects are in 8-bit and both machines are running the latest version of AE (17.1.4).

To indicate the problem I’ve uploaded the two projects here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bkdca6l209ck0bv/AAA3zH0C18O9_qbFvVFMuiTSa?dl=0

Both are identical, but one is made on my iMac and the other one on my Macbook. The Macbook gives the GPU error when opening the iMac project and previewing set to full quality.

[Ferenc Van der velde]

Hi Filip,

Thanks for taking a look at the images! So that’s where all the information is going to. The whole reflection map is stored for some frames. Very weird that After Effects decides to do this at random.

I’m using the CC Blobbylize effect here. This effect uses a bump layer to add depth and also uses this layer as a trackmatte. Maybe this effect doesn’t make up it’s mind.

When I take a look at these frames in the project, they are consistent in the RGB Straight view, but in the render they don’t.

Great solution with the Solid Composite effect. This will decrease the file sizes by a factor 10 and hopefully a faster final render.

Thanks a lot!

[Ferenc Van der velde]

Because the file sizes were too big I’ve switched to 8bpc. At this color depth the different file sizes still occurs, but just on a smaller scale.

I have uploaded two examples here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qb6gnzip4x5hmkm/AADaLsvX-cFSTGxFlbXnDcvya?dl=0

To rule out any difference between the content I’ve distilled two consecutive frames of the same sequence. The first frame of “Square_#####” is 6MB and the second 29MB. The same applies for “Two_Arrows_#####”. The file size from the first frame is 1MB whereas the second one is 10MB.

[Ferenc Van der velde]

Thanks Dan, this script is still going strong in 2020!

[Ferenc Van der velde]

Actually I just did a clean install of MacOS, so I already had one of the latest AE versions. One day later, Adobe came with the update. I thought 16.1.1 sounds more mature then 16.0.1.

So this is just another bug of a too early released AE version. Then I’ll have to work around it.

Thanks for your reply.

[Ferenc Van der velde]

So I installed Amphetamine (Caffeine doesn’t work on Mojave). This worked for a week, but now the computer falls a sleep again while rendering and running Amphetamine. I have the feeling my iMac has a hardware related issue.

[Ferenc Van der velde]

You are still working on Sierra? Did not know Mojave or High Sierra were that buggy. I must say I ran in to serveral kind of problems lately so maybe I can blame Mojave ☺

I will give Caffeine a try. Thanks for your answer.