Joe Moya
Forum Replies Created
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Stock answer doesn’t work this time…
Upscaling doesn’t work if you go from a smaller pixel dimensioned sized original to a close camera shot (i.e., zoom)… however, it works fine if you have a detailed enough original source…. which is why the original source created in PSP is matched to the AE comps comp size settings.
I think the bottom line is that Adobe products in general don’t work well with HD anything. And for that matter, there aren’t many compositing packages that do very well with HD size work that gets complicated and lengthy. (…heaven forbid if you work with RED files). So… I guess it’s really best to say that 1440×1080 size comps are bad for RAM intensive user like After Effects…but, works “OK”/better in Nuke (and, I hear Combustion as well).
At any rate…
The render solution is to eliminate the use of OpenGL when using certain combination of Render Composition Settings.
The combination that works is Quality Settings with Resolution Full (or current settins IF the settings in the comp are Full)…. other combination with or without OpenGL doesn’t work with the Puppet Tool (…see my guess as to why this happens below).
Bottom line:
This problem is pretty much another example of OpenGL not working with certain effects (such as Movie Looks… which comes first to mind). And, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the camera zoom. In fact, what I think is happening is that the memory buffer is going from “best” compressor option to an “adaptive” filter to compensate for memory overload from compressing a large frame using Puppet Tool. This is why forcing the render settings to “full” keeps the compressor set to “best”. This “full/best” to “adaptive” compression change caused by the Puppet Tool results in a degradation in the frame quality… it is not the zoom.
Now, my problem is working with 9 hr. long render times for a 1 min. 20 sec. video without OpenGL active… all because of one effect – Puppet Tool. I am still scratching my head on solving the long render time problem.
Any suggestions? …looking at using cineform… but, don’t have any experience with that application. In the past my very beefy render computer/mini render farm hasn’t had any significant problems until this complex animation project showed up (and, it’s a 2D ANIMATION – no less… ugh… I haven’t had problems with my 3D animations like I have had with this 2D project). I guess I need to get more experience with AE and 2D animation stuff…. for the past 4 days, I’ve been getting waaay more experience that I ever wanted.
FWIW Joe
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What are using for render resolution…
“current settings” or “full”, etc.
Monkey around with these setting and see what happens.
If it renders in a the draft mode (i.e., 16bit or 8 bit) then it is probably a buffer overload. You can try an get around this by trying different file compression codecs in combinations with different resolution settins. This process will not be easy or fast…but, it is mostly likely a memory issue that is hitting a wall when the buffer limits are hit. It is not likely a plug-in or effect that is causing the problem since it doesn’t happen at the same point during the render.
Another solution would be to remove any color corrections and/or blurs to reduce the memory system demands during the render… then, apply these effects after a first render. Same can be accomplished if you dumb down the bpc to 16 if you are using 32bit color.
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This is what happens when companies get so big. They forget how they got there. Adobe has made some big strides in the past few years. We all know their strengths…but their weaknesses are beginning to show. Being more interested in what the cost would be to them, “instead of the cost it would be to their customers”.
Excellent observation… the total disregard for a 32bit and 64bit compatibility is representative of your statement.
It seems, if anything strikes a cord with Adobe is when someone brings up this 32 to 64bit compatibility issue. Costs related to this are being transferred to the customer and/or the third party venders who produce plug-ins. If anything, this weakness is where the competitors could capitalize significantly on Adobe’s market share IF they had the fortitude to explote the plug-in 32/64 bit incompatibility issue.
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Most well known third party venders are OK to deal with… however, you need to be careful of deals that sound to good to be true from a lesser know vender.
I bought mine from Amazon.com… that being said, you need to be aware that Adobe will be releasing CS5 and you might want to make sure you are in the window of free upgrade “time period”. the first version I bought was only 6 days outside of this window and I had to pay for a full upgrade (instead of getting it free).
Also, be aware that CS5 is 64 bit only… as a result… I would hold out on getting any third pary plug-ins since they will be useless with a 64bit ONLY software. 32bit plug-ins will not work with a 64bit (only) software. With that limitation, CS5 will make some expensive collection of third-party plug-ins obsolete. I hope Adobe decides to make 32bit plug-ins compatible with the 64bit system… but, I doubt it.
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Every HD file I have ever rendered has been HUGE… IF I wanted to keep the quality level high.
The concern I always had was the time it took to render… for significant increase in rendering speed, I always make sure that OpenGL is turned on (…except with Movie Looks Plug-in – OpenGL and Looks doesn’t play well together with Nvidia cards).
Avid is pretty good about accepting just about any video codec… so the choice of compression video file formats are numerous but all have some sort of degradation involved (specially if you want smaller sized files). How much size reduction and quality reduction you are willing to accept depends upon what you are going to do with the final output.
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I don’t this RAM performance issue applies (or does it?) to the fastest intel chip made… the 8 core i7. If memory is correct, Adobe can’t utilize the 8 cores of this really fast chip… the question is this… do you treat the i7 chip as if it is a 4 core chip and the resulting need for RAM?
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Update:
The AVC Intra 50 1080i 60Hz is a sequence preset that will not render to a gold screen “media pending” problem.
Plus, this seems to have a choice that has a 1440×1080 frame size with a 1.333 pixel size…which more closely matches the original captured media… this may or may not make a difference since I can see no difference between the two – DVCHDPRO and AVC Intra 50. Also, the preview choices given in this sequence preset option are both I-Frame or P2.
AVC-I 50 1080i60 is an optional sequence for use of HDV video from the Canon HV30 if you are having problems rendering (i.e., “media pending” that never goes away).
IMPORTANT ADDENDUM:
FINALLY… New Sequence>General tab… choose the DESKTOP preset under the General tab and change Preview to MICROSOFT AVI,
The Desktop Editing mode with the MICROSOFT AVI Preview File Format will work… Something I wasn’t aware of when I started this seach because… it appears ADOBE seems to have a drop down menu clitch and this option does not show up every time I drop down the menu. The Desktop option on the editing mode does not always show as an option in the drop down menu (at least for me).
DESKTOP with MICROSOFT AVI in the Video Previews Format drop down menu. – Choose the appropriate codec… The best one I have found to use is the Unompressed YYVY 422 8bit.
Joe
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I’m with slobodan… your biggest bottleneck sounds more like your HD’s are not cutting the mustered…(or, could be a video card driver that is not compatible with Win7).
If you are editing HD you really should be using at least a Quad Core mobo with as much low latency RAM as you can afford (using 64bit) if you composite a lot of video.
If you want to speed up render speed and avoid of a lot of problems… you need to use a dual raid system such as two Raid 0 setups (using 4 hard drives – 1 raid for scratch, 1 for OS) to help speed up rendering signficantly.
The last I looked, the fastest HD’s are running at about 15K rmp on e-sata drives. And, the lowest cost and best raid controller is an Adaptec. That combo makes for a pretty fast hard drive raid setup.
A system like this can cost some money… but, you would see a significant increase in productivity.
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Better than that… with unrendered work area HD, I can throw color correction or better yet… Magic Bullet Looks with Mercalli Motion Stabilizing and some 2D text animation… and, I get no additional drag. Moreover, same can be said with video previews set at Max Bit depth and Max Render Quality (although a “max bit and quality” slows a workspace render significantly…but I can work just as fast with render as I can without).
The key? As best I can tell the speed is gained mostly with a REALLY fast RAID 0 setup with the fasted HD’s made and really fast raid controller…. and using just about the fastest and most $$$ CPU available doesn’t hurt either.
I am sure there may be some advantage to the Mercury Playback Engine… but, at this point and based on what little was shown in the review… I don’t see a lot of advantage of going to a 64 bit system (and loosing use of my rather significant investment in third party plug-ins) when I have a 32 bit system doing just about the same thing.
All that said… I do have major stability problems. Adobe PP loaded with many tracks and plug-in effects will most likely freeze or crash during render, can’t consistently build a preview frame for Looks, and when rendered I almost ALWAYS get the “media pending” gold screen, and will find various plug-ins and transitions will cause all kinds of stability problems at random… but, then again that also happens when I have single track of HD video. On the contrary, I find almost none of these same problems with same HD video source (using similar or exact plug-ins) don’t exist with After Effects, Avid Liquid, Avid MC or Vega.