[Kenneth Lustig]

I think I’m having the same issue, Ken. Unfortunately I don’t have a solution yet. I do however have a whole bunch of dead ends to share and some screen shots of the problem. Let me know if this is the same issue.

I’m using an Adrenaline and AE 7. I also tried this on laptops with XPress Pro and the result looks basically the same.

Here is the screen shot of my nice lower third in AE:
https://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=viewedinaeda4.jpg

Here is one of many cleanly exported Quicktime variations, seen in the QT player:
https://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=viewedinqtplayerbc0.jpg

Here is the poor result when the clip is imported into Avid:
https://img167.imageshack.us/my.php?image=importedinavidig0.jpg

Here are the solutions I tried:

I rendered the comp to all codecs that support an embedded alpha channel and a 4:3 ratio under Quicktime, Video for Windows, and OMF settings, as well as to TGA and PNG image sequences. I used the appropriate new Avid Quicktime codecs, including the Avid DV, Avid Meridian, and Avid Unpacked codecs. I used the none codec setting in Quicktime and Video for Windows as well.

In each codec, I exported each possible combinations of the following settings: straight alpha, premultiplied alpha, interlaced upper first, interlaced lower first, and noninterlaced. In turn, I imported each version with correctly matched and incorrectly matched alpha and interlace settings. In most cases, invert alpha was correct for the alpha channel, and the image would overlay on my video tracks and mix properly. The image quality stayed looking pixelated, however, no matter what. Mismatching field settings did make the image look slightly worse.

I set each codec to the best quality setting possible as my lower thirds are 8 seconds though file size did not appear to affect the problem in Avid. I did not manually set keyframes when the option existed, assuming the “best” slider would produce the optimal image export.

My comp and Avid project are both 720 x 480. However, I also toggled each of them to 720 x 486 in all four combinations just to be sure. Mismatching created a slight horizontal stretch or squash, as expected, but did not affect the pixelated look of my lower thirds.

I imported each file in OMF 1:1, OMF 2:1, DV 25, and DV 50. Regardless of setting, the image did not improve. At DV 25, the image looked very slightly worse.

My Avid is in High Quality with the green indicator on at the bottom of the sequence window. I verified that the image quality is not just a preview problem by rendering, sending the video to tape, and exporting to a Quicktime from Avid. What appears in the viewer and the screenshot from Avid above is indeed the final quality of output.

I do have a successful workaround: Exporting the edited video from Avid and adding the lower thirds in AE. I can also bring them into Premiere, but my workcenter uses Avids and a Unity server so we’re tied to that workflow, Premiere being mainly an extra on the AE workstation. In any case this isn’t an efficient solution with the import/export time involved.

I have burned up two full work days and 9 DVD ROMs going from one workstation to another figuring out what is not the problem. Hopefully someone will see the images above and know what the solution is. 🙂

[Kenneth Lustig]

I neglected to mention – after saving a RAM preview, you need to delete it from your assets list or you’ll run out of memory quite quickly.

[Kenneth Lustig]

To recap: I built a 3D timeline with approx 7 lights, a couple hundred 3D layers based on Illustrator files, using a camera with depth of field enabled. Basically, I just about maxxed out the limits of the AFX engine. Not having access to the Digital Anarchy plugins, I used just After Effects and Illustrator to create my comp.

I was having huge problems with all kinds of memory issues (not enough memory to create ### X ### frame buffer, not enough memory to create shadow map, not enough memory for blurring, unknown errors, etc). This is on a Windows XP SP2 system with 2GB of RAM, a terrabyte of hard drive space, and dual 512MB video cards which should have had plenty of capability. In fact, the render queue never showed more than 15% memory use prior to a crash.

The problem seems to be related to a memory leak and other assorted bugs in the After Effects rendering engine. In AFX 6.5 the rendering engine produced linear artifacts on my 3D layers once a certain number of layers got added. This was related to the proximity of layers which were close to each other or overlapping. In AFX 7.0 the artifacts went away, but the memory errors were still rampant. In fact, I could get the entire timeline to RAM preview in AFX 6.5 while in 7.0 I could not. The rendering process would not start at all with the 7.0.1 patch applied.

To successfully get the final 3D render, I used a clean 7.0 install. I turned on layer caching in the secret menu accessible by hitting shift before pulling up preferences (note this is contrary to the optimization recommendations in Adobe’s tech sheets). I also set RAM use to 120%/60%, which was also not the recommended setting, but I found that the length of the bit I could render was directly affected by how much RAM or VRAM was available. I turned the disk cache on at 60 GB, which was the largest sized disk cache that seemed to increase the number of frames. I set the RAM preview options to maximum quality – basically, setting them to the same quality as my final render – and turned off OpenGL. Even when I wasn’t using OpenGL I found that the incidence of the frame buffer error was much higher when it was enabled; looking at some related problems in the Adobe tech notes I think there is a video card buffering problem in the code someplace also which might be related to this setting.

To render I moved the mark in and mark out sliders at the top of the composition timeline to shorter and shorter frame lengths. I finally got the RAM preview to successfully complete with the mark in and mark out set to about 120 frames, but the amount is strongly related to the complexity of the scene in the camera’s field of view. Occasionally, I had to shorten the mark in-mark out to as few as 40 frames. Once the RAM preview worked, I saved the RAM preview for my composition. After each RAM preview saved, I quit the program, or else the ratio of frames rendered to crashes accumulated as if I had rendered them all at once. Using the Purging commands between passes and using the purge options in the secret menu did not help – only quiting.

No matter how many frames I had in cache, saving the RAM preview caused AFX to sometimes re-preview cached frames, and it will always inexplicably dump the cache and do a redundant render pass even if layer caching is enabled. However using the export, render queue, and make movie options crashed my renders no matter how short the sequence I tried; only save RAM preview successfully output a file. So, this method is better than having no solution at all. The good news is that such short renders took less than 30 minutes apiece, so if I got a crash it wasn’t a heartbreaking stop after 5 hours of rendering. The down side is that because they’re short renders, I can’t leave the computer rendering overnight so it ties up a workstation during production time.

By holding down the shift key to move the mark in next to the mark out after each save, my clips are rendered out back to back and can easily be recombined in an NLE. I did not do a lot of experimenting with codecs in the RAM preview options, either, finding it alot easier (and probably faster) to squeeze or export the output once reassembled than to wait for a rendering pass to complete.

[Kenneth Lustig]

Chris,
I took a look at your theater animation on createdigitalmotion – what workarounds did you use to get that many 3D layers to render properly? In addition to the artifacts (which have gone away for me in 7.0), I’m now experiencing a series of memory errors such as “unable to create shadow map vertices” and frame buffer issues. I’ve tried the secret menu purge trick, reducing the shadow maps to minimum, rendering with a number of codecs and options, exporting, adjusting cache percentages, turning on and off disk cache, and switching renderers. What’s really bugging me is that my render que never shows more than 15% memory use.

[Kenneth Lustig]

Sent. Thanks for looking at it.

[Kenneth Lustig]

i can’t remember if ae6.5 can change the shadow map resoultion, but that may help… in ae7, choose comp settings, advanced tab, advanced 3d, options… select a smaller shadow map.

The shadow map resolution is set to comp size, which is only NTSC DV, but reducing the map did not resolve anyway. I’m using a dedicated video workstation with 2 GB Ram, a 512 mb SLI video configuration, and a terrabyte of hard drive space with a 10 GB AFX scratch. I shouldn’t be running out of memory but of course anything’s possible.

Also, changing the layers to white did not remove the artifacts, thus comping shadow maps back in would not work with that method. Good trick to use for later though, thanks!

I’m beginning to think that the problem lies with some bad math in the renderer itself which is generating mistakes about where the shadows are supposed to fall. A key to this may be that all of the .ai files are using alpha channel information from illustrator, and AFX seems to be having a hard time with that. I noticed that objects which overlap are allowing some light to pass through their seams as well. This also goes away in the 7.0 render so maybe Adobe corrected it in that version. I also noticed that while repositioning layers does not remove artifacts, it changes the pattern – though not predictably.

I am still going to try exporting the .ai’s out to an early Illustrator version and I think I’m going to give some raster conversions a shot as well to see if AFX might just be having trouble with .ai alpha information versus what’s stored in .png or something.

[Kenneth Lustig]

Q: Do the artifacts appear on the same layers all the time, or different layers each time you open or preview AE?
A: The artifacts appear in identical positions every time. Although they do vary a little in each frame as the timeline animates, the position is not random.

Q: Can you hide those layers and render them separately?
A: Unfortunately, they cannot be rendered seperately due to their relation in 3D.

Q: Can you render the shadows only and comp them back in?
A: I was not aware one could do this with the AFX engine. I will try it.

Q: Can you import the project into a new project?
A: The artifacts persist. Same issue if I nest the comp.

Q: Can you go back to a previously saved version of the project and retrace your steps one at a time to see when the artifacts started appearing? (shame on you if you can’t!)
A: Yes, but I still can’t avoid the problem as I build toward completion. As soon as I add the last few layers, the problem appears again. I’d like to try to avoid redesigning the storyboard.

Q: If you can isolate the troublesome layers, can you go back into Illustrator and save as a previous version of Illustrator?
A: Will give this a try also.

Additional Note: One of our production machines has AFX 7.0 on it; the problem is completely eliminated in the new version with no changes. I’ll get my deadline met with the AFX 7.0 machine and work on resolving this in 6.5 as well to see if there’s a good solution.