[Walter Soyka]

[Eric Steinberg] “I’ve found a few software packages, but not timeline based. One thing that seems attractive to me, is the ability to buffer upcoming video, so the response will be immediate when you start the clip. Any suggestions? “

Playback Pro is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for video playback on the Mac. Playback Pro Plus is the two-channel version that allows dissolves between clips.

I think it’d be a good fit for your requirements, except that it’s not timeline-based. It runs on a playlist model, and with linking, it’s functionally very similar to a timeline model. Can you elaborate a little on what about the timeline model is important to you?

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
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[Walter Soyka]

[Deepak Adhikary] “Is there a way to extend the keyframes, but keep them relative to each other so that I don’t have to rotoscope all over a gain?”

Yes; select all the keyframes, from first to last. Hold Option/Alt while dragging the last keyframe, and all keyframes in between will adjust proportionately. See Move keyframes in time from the help system for more.

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]

Here’s a great tutorial on realistic film grain using a method similar to what you’re suggesting.

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]

If you’re used to working with SD or even HD comps on modern computers, the render times for larger comps can be stunning. I frequently work with large comp sizes (4K and up), and I’ve found it’s very helpful to adapt my workflow a bit to stay productive despite the lengthy render times.

There’s an outstanding page on Improving performance in the After Effects help system, which includes all the features I’ll mention below and many others.

Here are some After Effects features—some common, some often-overlooked—that I rely on when working with larger comps:

• Multiprocessing: if you have a multi-core system and at least 2-4 GB of RAM per core, you can enable multiprocessing. After Effects will launch multiple copies of its renderer to processing multiple frames simultaneously.
• Zoom and resolution: these go hand-in-hand. You can reduce your preview resolution to save processing time and RAM.
• Caps Lock: when on, Caps Lock disables rendering for preview.
• Draft 3D, frame blending, and motion blur: toggle these to speed up previews. For render, you’ll probably want Draft 3D off, and frame blending and motion blur on, but they are all render-intensive, so you can save time by toggling them for working and preview.
• Proxies and pre-rendering: allow you to render out a complex pre-comp, save it to disk, and refer to the footage on disk instead of re-rendering. Once I get a pre-comp working well, I’ll proxy it so I don’t have to continually re-render it during previews while working on other elements. You can use proxies with a wide variety of settings: simple stills, draft-quality renders, or high-quality renders. If you use proxies instead of pre-renders, make sure you change your render settings in the render queue to use proxies.
• Region of Interest: allows you to select a smaller section of the comp to preview; saves on processing time and RAM usage.
• Shift-RAM preview: allows you to choose different setting for RAM preview (0 on the numeric keypad) and Shift-RAM preview (Shift-0 on the numeric keypad). I use regular RAM preview for high quality previews so I can see detail in my work, but I use Shift-RAM preview at quarter or eighth resolution, skipping at least every other frame, so I can quickly see the overall effect.

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]

From “Network rendering with watch folders” in the Adobe help:

“If you have a full licensed copy of After Effects, you can set it up to work with render-only versions of After Effects called render engines. Your license entitles you to install as many copies of the render engine as you want on your network, as long as one activated copy of After Effects is installed on that network.

You install render engines in the same manner as the full version of the application, but you do not activate them. You run the render engine using the Adobe After Effects Render Engine shortcut in the Adobe After Effects CS4 folder.”

In your case, you would need the Windows installer for AE CS4.

Let me first outline how network rendering works with After Effects, and then I will list a couple of bullet point notes from my experiences with network rendering. Much of this information is found in the manuals, but some of is not. All of it was learned the hard way.

How After Effects Network Rendering Works

You use Collect Files to get your project, its render queue, and all required footage together into a single folder. You configure the render nodes to watch that folder; once Collect Files is complete, it creates a render control file. On the render nodes, you select the folder to watch. When the render control file appears in it, the render nodes begin work according to the options it specifies. All watch folder network renders are done as image sequences, with each instance of AE on each render node working on one frame at a time.

There is no active communication among the render nodes, and the machine hosting the watch folder does not actively control them. Control is completely passive — each machine looks at the shared storage to see if “Frame 0000” has been rendered yet. The first one to see that there is no image for “Frame 0000” will create that first file in the image sequence to claim responsibility for the frame, then begin rendering it. Finally, when the frame is complete, it overwrites the placeholder “Frame 0000” file.

As other render nodes join the party, they will see that “Frame 0000” already exists, so they will skip it and look for “Frame 0001.” If “Frame 0001” already exists, they’ll continue sequentially until they find the first frame that doesn’t exist, create a file for it to claim responsibility for it, and begin rendering.

All the render nodes are also accessing footage from the shared storage, so that storage system is seeing many constant small reads and writes.

As you can imagine, this places some serious strain on the network and disk subsystem on the server.

Notes on After Effects Network Rendering

• Each of AE’s render nodes is self-directed; there is no supervisor or controller for distributing the workload. (See this thread where I explain how the AE network renderer works in some detail.)
• You need a very fast network and very fast storage on your server. (Again, see the link above for my explanation of how the AE network renderer works and why this is necessary.)
• Network rendering will create an image sequence on your shared storage. You can add a post-render action to re-import the image sequence and output a movie, but this will only be handled by one computer. If there is sound in your project, don’t forget to output it separately if necessary.
• You must specify the maximum number of render nodes when you set up the watch folder render. Multiprocessing increases your node count. For example, if you have four quad-core machines, you will have 16 render nodes.
• All fonts and plugins used in your project must be installed on all render nodes.
• Some plugins are licensed for unlimited use in render farms; others are limited to a specific number of render nodes; still others must be licensed for render nodes separately. Many plugins activate through their installers, but others activate with the AE environment itself. In this case, you will need a full license of AE in order to activate them. Most font licensing also limits the number of workstations they may be installed on.
• Some plugins allow GPU acceleration. I highly recommend turning this off unless your render farm is completely homogenous.
• Cross-platform file naming and path conventions can be tricky.

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]

This happens if your viewer settings don’t match your RAM preview settings. In other words, if you are viewing at 100% / Full, but RAM previewing at 100% / Half, the green line will disappear after RAM preview because it doesn’t have any full-res frames cached. If you initiate another RAM preview, the cached half-res frames should re-appear.

If you change your settings to match, the green line shouldn’t disappear.

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]

Thomas, this a really comprehensive list. Thanks for such a thorough answer.

There are only two things I would add: to the direct question of synching DVD players, Dave Jones Design makes hardware controllers for synching professional Pioneer DVD and Blu-ray players.

The second is a question — what else is going on in the room besides the video? If you have a requirement for interaction or show control (like integrating lighting, hazers, motors, etc.), you might eliminate some of these systems from consideration and add media servers like Pandora’s Box or Hippotizer to your research list.

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]

There was a pretty good thread on synched HD playback last year, and the poster had a successful installation with the Brightsign/Roku players:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/158/855777

The DJD sync systems are very nice if you prefer to use optical media.

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]

Here’s a related thread on this topic with a lot of good information from a couple months ago:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/974636

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 think you could use either BoinxTV or VeeScope Live for live chroma keying on a Mac. Trials of both are available for testing.

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