[Walter Soyka]

[Steven Nichols] “Thanks again. So what would be the benefits or the ATI 5870 over the 5770?”

You’re welcome.

See this benchmark which compares the ATI 5870 and 5770. The 5870 is performs slightly better in OpenGL, and a lot better in OpenCL. It makes no difference with the current version of Color.

In terms of hardware, the 5870 is a more powerful card than the 5770, but the current software releases aren’t really taking advantage of the extra processing power. Maybe the next new “awesome” release of Final Cut Studio will leverage Apple’s OpenCL technology, but that’s all still conjecture at this point.

I think that we are just at the beginning of a lot of innovation in processing on GPUs. Outside of Apple, there’s a lot of cross-industry momentum behind nVIDIA’s CUDA, but Apple doesn’t even sell an nVIDIA option in the Mac Pro anymore. Right now, vendors seem very siloed in their GPU preference.

My recommendation is to buy for your workflow today and budget to swap out your graphics card in a year or two if your needs change.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Steven Nichols] “I thought you would get an improvement with Open GL regarding previews in After Effects?”

I strongly recommend disabling Open GL support. It has a couple limitations which I consider show-stoppers. From the Render with OpenGL page in the documentation:

Important: Because not all features of a composition can be rendered with OpenGL—and because some features that can be rendered with OpenGL are rendered with different results—you may only want to use OpenGL rendering to accelerate previews and to provide faster rendering for non-final results.

Note: You cannot use the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing feature while also using OpenGL to render RAM previews or render for final output. The Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously feature works by using background processes on multiple CPU processor cores to render frames.

The GTX 285 (now discontinued, may it rest in peace) would be a great card for DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro CS5’s Mercury Playback Engine — nVIDIA’s CUDA technology is incredibly powerful — but ATI is preferred for FCP and Color. It doesn’t make a difference to After Effects, so I think it makes sense to look at the rest of your pipeline and make your decision accordingly.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Steven Nichols] “I have another question regarding the card. Do you think I should get a better card than the ATI for After Effects, and if yes what would you pick ? Thanks again.”

After Effects itself renders on the CPU, not the GPU, so your graphics card won’t impact AE performance.

There are a handful of third-party plugins (like Sapphire, Colorista II, Knoll Light Factory, Optical Flares, and FxFactory Pro) that can render on the GPU, but I’ve never seen any comparative data on performance with different graphics cards. I think it’s largely irrelevant with multiprocessing, anyway.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “would it accomplish the same thing if you were to add the Working Comp to the Render Queue, then use the Add Output Module command?”

Yup!

Anthony, please disregard my long-winded post — Dave’s method is the solution!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

I’ve reviewed your sync test. All four dots and audio bursts begin in sync on my system. On the first, third, and fourth tests, the audio cuts out one frame before the video. On the second test, the audio extends 12 frames past the end of the video.

If you are using After Effects CS5 and AIFF audio, make sure you install the 10.0.1 update, which addresses some bizarre audio glitch problems. If you are using a version prior to CS5, avoid temporally-compressed audio like MP3 or M4A; transcode to AIFF or WAV before importing the footage into AE.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Anthony Dupsta] “I am wondering if there is a trick to render out one stream of Log and one stream of lin files through the same render. Two separate image sequences. One log one lin”

If you want to make multiple separate outputs from the same comp without re-rendering a second time, you can cheat with proxies.

Let’s say you’re working in a comp name WORKING COMP. Drag and drop that on the New Comp button, and rename the new comp ALTERNATE RENDER. Create a proxy for WORKING COMP, using Best Settings and your first output module. Add ALTERNATE RENDER to the Render Queue, making sure to Use All Proxies in the Render Settings. Set your second output module and render.

When the first render (WORKING COMP) completes, the second comp (ALTERNATE RENDER) will begin rendering. Instead of re-rendering each individual frame in WORKING COMP (nested within ALTERNATE RENDER) from scratch, After Effects will read from the rendered proxy on disk. For this reason, the first render should be a lossless format.

The two renders will run back-to-back, without any user intervention required. Make sure to turn WORKING COMP’s proxy off (or remove it entirely) if you need to make revisions. If you need to make more than two renders, you could duplicate ALTERNATE RENDER in your render queue and change output settings as many times as required.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Click the pixel aspect ratio correction button in the viewer:

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Bill, I got a nice chuckle out of your post — surely you’ve spent some time in HR…

In fairness, though, I thought the linked job posting was unlike the standard comical job ad. I found it both reasonable and specific about what kind of talent they were looking for. When building tools for artists, you need the artistic skill to understand how the tool will be used as well as the technical chops to implement it.

My business is based on the premise that design and engineering are interrelated, and I think it makes perfect sense to look for talent with artistic sense and technical skills in the same cranium. It’s a huge differentiator on projects that push the envelope.

To Tim’s point about learning everything, it’s not enough to be deep or wide anymore. I think T-shaped knowledge is becoming critical: deep in your specialty and wide in areas around it.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Monica Nolan] “I created an animation in AE CS4 using primarily photoshop & illustrator files and a little HD movie footage, 1920×1280 square 30fps. My comp settings were: 1280×720 square. I didn’t get the output specs (bad mistake, rush job) and I have a sinking feeling I’m going to be asked for a 1920×1280 output.”

I assume you mean 1920×1080.

You can duplicate your comp, then run File > Scripts > Scale Composition. You can set the width to 1920. The script will preserve your original aspect ratio and automatically adjust all your elements to match the new size.

A major caveat: if the resolution of your footage is less than the new resolution, it will be upscaled and appear soft. Since your original video was 1920×1080, this may not be a concern. Hopefully all your Photoshop elements are large enough. Illustrator elements should probably have continuous rasterization on.

[Monica Nolan] “Also, how does one choose a frame rate when the comp consists primarily of animated artwork? what difference does 29.97, 30, 23.98, 24 make? I’m basing my fps off the movie source footage at this point.”

The frame rate you work in (and the resolution) depends entirely on the deliverable specs. Like you said above, starting work without knowing what you’ll be responsible for delivering is a mistake that can cause all kinds of headaches later.

[Monica Nolan] “The client is asking for a DVD and a movie file. It will be played at a trade show of some sort (not sure which they will use).”

You’ll need to get more information from your client here. For a DVD deliverable, a 1920×1080 comp won’t be necessary; in fact, you’ll have to scale your 720p comp down. As for the movie file, you should try to find out the specs: resolution, frame rate, container, codec, and bit rate.

The resolution will probably be decided by the monitor they’re using. With any luck, it’ll be a 720p monitor.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Karl Sal] “What’s the solution? Is there a way to automatically adjust the composition’s size to my video for optimal quality?”

Import your video, then drag the footage and drop it on the New Composition button in the Project panel. After Effects will automatically create a new comp using your footage and its length, resolution, and frame rate.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events