[Walter Soyka]

[Andy Hunt] “Hi- I’m relatively new to Hi Def but I am shooting everything on it now- Most TV Stations here allow me to send electronically- I subscribe to https://www.mailbigfile.com- but no one gives me specific encoding instructions so I just make-do. I use QT Conversion default settings with H264 compressor- I then change the size to NTSC 720 X 480 with 16 X 9 Aspect ratio and send it off. No one has complained but I was wondering if there is a better-more industry standard-way of doing it.”

You might be able to get precise delivery specs for their playout systems, but you might need to talk to an engineer to get them.

That aside, do you have to downconvert from SD to HD, or can you deliver HD?

Also, have you looked at using Compressor instead of using QT conversion? You can get a lot more control over the encode.

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 are using AE CS4, have you upgraded to 9.0.2?

If you are using multiprocessing, do you have enough RAM? Try turning it off.

If you are using any footage with interframe compression (like HDV or h264-based material), transcode it to a format that uses intraframe compression instead. Uncompressed, Quicktime Animation, or Quicktime PNG are reasonable choices.

If you are using OpenGL for rendering, turn it off.

Can you narrow it down to any specific clip, kind of footage, or effect? Does it ever fail consistently in the same spot in a comp?

When all else fails, render to an image sequence instead of a movie. With an image sequence, you can check the “Skip existing files” option in Render Settings to allow a render to pick up where it left off after a crash.

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]

[Tom Lee] “So can I serve the watch folder from my Primary CPU the MacPro? In more words, I’m working in After Effects CS4 on the Mac Pro, Creating the project, then I need to render or Ram Preview. Do I have to save the project the watch folder then it renders? What triggers the render? What part does my Mac Pro play in the render?
Does it help render while not in Watch folder mode?”

Let me first outline how network rendering works with After Effects, and maybe then I can answer any other questions you might have:

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. Unless you have at least a gigabit network and a fast RAID on your Mac Pro, it might actually be slower to do a network render than simply to render on your workstation.

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]

Not at all — my original post definitely needed clarification.

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] “Actually, it won’t. At 29.97, you need to have interlaced footage and add 3:2 pulldown… and it’s normally done on SD footage, which contains interlacing… even if it’s progressive scan.

People who place 23.976 footage in a 29.97 FCP edit timeline — essentially the same thing as you suggest doing in AE — discover that the cadence turns out to be 2-2-2-4 instead of the proper 3-2-3-2 cadence. So every fourth frame, you’d see a little hitch in your git-along.”

Sorry I didn’t make myself clear — I was talking about comps with no external footage. If everything is generated from within AE (all stills, illustrations, solids, masks, effects, etc.) with keyframed animation, and you nest it in a comp with a different frame rate, it will smoothly reinterpret all your animation in the new 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

[Walter Soyka]

After Effects has a built-in network renderer that uses watch folders. It’s somewhat naive compared to a full-fledged render manager, but it does work. There’s a list of caveats: it requires fast shared storage and a fast network; you must manually load all fonts and plugins onto the render machines, some of which may not be licensed for distributed rendering; differing cross-platform file and path naming conventions can be difficult to work around.

There might be some workflow adjustments you can make to get the most out of your workstation. I use best-quality, lossless proxies (some prefer to pre-render instead, but I think proxies make for cleaner timelines) in my work a lot so I’m not constantly re-rendering the same pre-comped material. I also often render to image sequences, because if I only need to tweak a portion of a project, I can re-render only the changed frames instead of re-rendering the whole thing.

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]

[Anh Minh Truong] “I’ve tried putting the Prores24p footage in a new compo with a frame rate of 29.97 , and export it in Animation, but After Effects don’t seem to add that “smooth” pull-down… I see some jitter in the motion at every second.. like if it duplicated 6 frames at every 24 frames…”

Are you using actual ProRes video footage in your comp, or are you referring to the ProRes render you’ve already created?

If your comp entirely generated within AE, don’t pre-render before you put the 23.976 material in the 29.97 timeline. Instead, nest your master 23.976 comp in a 29.97 comp, and AE will smoothly re-interpret all your keyframed and animated motion and effects in the new frame rate.

If you do have other 24p video footage…

[Dave LaRonde] “Ooh! Ooh! Something else to try: Nest that 23.976 comp in a 59.94 ProRes comp and render. No 3:2 pulldown necessary. If you’re not using progressive-scan in the rest of the project, it might work. If you can change the project’s frame rate to 59.94, it WILL work.”

This is a great idea to try. Your blended projection system is progressive, so a 3:2 pulldown that relies on interlacing won’t help you. You’ll still sort of get a pull-down here, but it will use progressive frames instead of interlaced fields, so it won’t get clobbered by your progressive displays.

Just make sure of these two things:

1) the playback system can handle progressive media at 59.94 fps. The data rate will be twice as high as 29.97.

2) the widescreen switcher is running at a refresh rate of 59.94 Hz. For example, a Spyder may need to drop down to 29.97 to handle a pixel space of that size (I don’t remember offhand what the system’s total bandwidth is to tell you for sure.)

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 had this problem before, and I have no idea what causes it.

However, here’s a workaround: open your FLA file in Flash and export an image sequence of EPS files instead (File > Export > Movie… “EPS sequence”). Import this sequence into AE. Continuous rasterization will work properly on your new 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]

Sergio, there are a ton of great business articles here on the COW about starting, running, and growing a business.

https://library.creativecow.net/tutorials/businessmarketing

The advice I’d suggest for you, in broad strokes, is that simply being an editor is not enough. You must also now be a business owner, which requires an entirely separate skill set. You will have to wear many hats at the same time.

On pricing, you can’t just make these numbers up or try to charge what your competition is charging. You should figure out your expenses — how much money you need to live, how much overhead the business will require, and how much money it costs you to do the work you commit to — and charge enough to cover these expenses, some unforeseen expenses you didn’t think of, and then some profit margin.

Cash is king. When you run out, it’s game over. Learn the difference between cash flow and profit. Keep a cushion of cash to get you through lean times. Be smart about capital expenses (big purchases) and operating expenses (rentals and leases). Understand that “if you build it, they will come” is a recipe for ruin.

On sales, you must remember that you are not just a video editor — you are a problem solver. You must first identify your potential clients, then find their needs (which is not always as easy as it sounds), then satisfy them. You must build relationships, not just focus on individual projects.

You cannot be all things to all people. Find what you are good at, and become the best at it.

Don’t try to take shortcuts. Starting and running a business requires some legal work. Do your homework and do it right the first time to avoid big penalties later. Get an accountant who can help you set up your bookkeeping. Keep clean books and pay attention to what taxes must be paid.

Finally, your most valuable asset will be your reputation. Build it carefully and guard it jealously.

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 remember a couple threads on this topic from the past few years:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/27/857189

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/27/858591

The short version — it can be done, for recommended only for non-critical listening over short periods of time. Be careful not to damage your hearing, and remember that your mixes will be off and you may miss things like background noise in your clips.

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