After Effects config

[Christoffer Glans]

I have a Intel Sandy Bridge i7 at 3,4 Ghz with 16 Gb ram and GTX580 3Gb.
I have tried to configure AE to get the best performance out of it. How should I do it? Right now there are 5 processors working with 2GB Ram each, having 6Gb of cashe on my internal SSD drive. I dedicated the rest of the processor threads (3) to "other applications" and have 3Gb of RAM set aside for other applications.

Is there any other calibration I can do to this that makes it even faster?

 

[Kwan Khan]

My Set up on MAC Pro;

Installed RAM 16GB
RAM reserved for other Application 3GB
RAM available AE/Pr/..... 13GB

Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously;
Installed CPU: 8
CPUs resered for other App: 2
RAM allocation: 1.5 (ideally 2.GB) (If its to low you will find your render are failing because each CPU doesn't have enough memory to complete the render, you can adjust this on fly)

 

[Christoffer Glans]

thx, I thought that it was better to utilize more cores then having fewer with more RAM allocated. I seem to understand now that because each core focus on 1 frame, the larger the project resolution the more it needs or else it isn't enough. This might be why it crashes a few times.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Allocate all 8 threads to After Effects. There's no reason to let 3 threads sit idle. If you are running heavy background apps, you are still better off using all 8 threads and reducing process priority for AE.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Ok, so a little confused now, should or should I not allocate memory across more cores or more memory on fewer cores?

 

[Bruce Allen]

The answer is: it depends on your task. Also, AE multiprocessing is an inefficient stopgap.

If you really care about speed, divide up the anim into multiple chunks (1-50, 51-100, 101-150) and use an AE background rendering script.

The real solution is of course for After Effects to get all of the cores working on the current frame, like Nuke does.

That would be hard for Adobe to code but would be way better in terms of RAM usage, interactive responsiveness, etc.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Christoffer Glans]

But if you shut off multi-processing isn't that what it does? Allocating all cores to 1 frame, while 5 cores with 2GB each use 2GB for 1 frame x5?

I keep getting these "not enough RAM" and "shut down to prevent data loss" errors while working. Especially when doin RAM-preview.
Don't know what's going on but it keep happening more frequently.

 

[Bruce Allen]

But if you shut off multi-processing isn't that what it does? Allocating all cores to 1 frame, while 5 cores with 2GB each use 2GB for 1 frame x5?

I keep getting these "not enough RAM" and "shut down to prevent data loss" errors while working. Especially when doin RAM-preview.
Don't know what's going on but it keep happening more frequently.

If you shut down multi-processing, you get variable multi-threading of a single frame depending on the plugins used, what you're doing etc: a lot of your average After Effects rendering of a single frame is not multi-threaded.

To counteract this, Adobe offers the ability to run multiple helper instances of After Effects, each processing their own frame. Huge RAM penalty but at least it helps spread the work to the cores that often lie unused.

Hopefully they will in the future offer the ability to divide the current frame up into small chunks and spread the work across each CPU for a single frame more efficiently.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Hopefully they will in the future offer the ability to divide the current frame up into small chunks and spread the work across each CPU for a single frame more efficiently.

Is that what Nuke does?

 

[Bruce Allen]

Is that what Nuke does?

Yes. It's awesome and extremely fast.

And as computers get more and more CPU cores (which they will) in the future, interactivity in Nuke will just get faster... while After Effects will stay the same speed.

Of course then there's GPU acceleration - but again, the need to divide up THE FRAME YOU'RE WORKING ON efficiently across computing resources stays the same.

I seriously hope Adobe is working on this problem. The current solutions in After Effects are dead-end stopgaps and not worth spending more resources on, IMHO.

I've used all ends of the spectrum in terms of computation and RAM needs in AE:
- done a final grading pass on an entire feature
- rendered 6K versions of the Clash of the Titans and Captain America titles for billboards
- rendered complex stuff with tons of plugins that took half an hour to render PER FRAME at 4K
- render multiple-minute title sequences in HD stereo with 100s of layers and mid-level complexity and render times per frame

...and my conclusion is: good heavens, the current setup is really not going to work well for any of these in a future when we have more cores.

But the good news is: current computers are pretty darn fast, so even an inefficient engine can get the job done. Especially if it is easy to use, cheap and powerful, as After Effects is.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Christoffer Glans]

So what do you suggest Bruce? What should I do to optimize my work and speed? Currently I'm shifting between working in SD (when doing broadcast work) and 1080p/4K/5K for compositing and grading with clients who can't afford post production facilities.
So there might be two different settings based on what type of footage I'm posting.

 

[Bruce Allen]

So what do you suggest Bruce? What should I do to optimize my work and speed? Currently I'm shifting between working in SD (when doing broadcast work) and 1080p/4K/5K for compositing and grading with clients who can't afford post production facilities.
So there might be two different settings based on what type of footage I'm posting.

1. Buy RAM and try to make the multi-processing mode work for you (do tests)
or
2. Run AE in single-processing mode and occasionally switch it over to multi-mode if you have something that requires tons of frames processed but needs little RAM (something simple)

3. If you have clients asking for 4K or 5K then they should be paying you lots of money - so you should be able to get a computer with not only lots of cores and RAM... but fast cores. If they're asking for 4K or 5K but don't have money, tell them there is a thing called a Time-Quality-Money triangle. So they need patience on the Time end.

4. Use DaVinci whenever you can because it's much faster and the Lite verson is free. If you can, wait for the PC version, stick a GTX580 in it and enjoy GPU rendering bliss. But the Mac version is awesome and works right now.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Yes, I got the GTX580 with 3GB of video memory and I'm waiting for DaVinci resolve for PC, but at the moment I'm using the system I have, I don't have the intention of getting more RAM just yet, I don't know how much more performance I can get out of the i7 processor with more RAM. What you suggest is that if I do HD/4K/5K (and the clients knows it takes a little longer) I should go with more RAM and fewer cores under AE settings and if I do smaller simple stuff I should use more cores with less memory to each?