Extremely SLOW render in After Effects with R3d

[Jeremy Wiles]

Hi,

I'm rendering out a 55 sec animation that includes some 4k Red footage. The render time is 33 hours! AE is setup to use all the cores and RAM in my system. I've pre-rendered all the precomps, but it is still taking such a long time. Is there anything I can do with the R3d files to get this to render faster? I don't need 4k files, so is there a way to use the proxies instead?

I'm running AE on Vista 64bit, 12GB ram, I7 Quad core processor.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Jeremy

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

You have the same computer setup I do. It sounds like you may be rendering at full resolution. If your output is 1080P, try rendering at half resolution, that should speed things up drastically.
Also make sure that you have your multi-core setup properly in AE. I have found that I can only set 2 to 3 cores (leave 1 or 2 cores free for other operations) becasue of the amount of RAM that AE requires to render 4K footage. Set each core to 2.8GB RAM.

 

[sander kamp]

I don't know how AE behaves on a PC but on my mac it is very very RAM hungry when rendering RED footage and when it runs out of RAM it starts swapping to the disks which makes everything ten times slower. You might have to set it up using fewer cores to render faster.

 

[Jeremy Wiles]

You have the same computer setup I do. It sounds like you may be rendering at full resolution. If your output is 1080P, try rendering at half resolution, that should speed things up drastically.
Also make sure that you have your multi-core setup properly in AE. I have found that I can only set 2 to 3 cores (leave 1 or 2 cores free for other operations) becasue of the amount of RAM that AE requires to render 4K footage. Set each core to 2.8GB RAM.

Stefan, thanks for the advice. I've set the red footage at half resolution and it is moving a bit faster - down from 33 hours to about 20 hours.

Under preferences I set it to use 2gb of ram per processor. We have a total of 8 cores, but only 12gb ram. Is this how you would do it?

 

[sander kamp]

On my mac I have 8 cores (16 virtual) and 12GB RAM. But rendering out 4k down to 1080p I have to limit it to 4 cores and even then the RAM is gone in no time. Giving it more cores to render makes the whole computer slow down until the point I can't do anything anymore - clearly a sign of excessive disk swapping.

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

In order for after effects to continuously use multiple cores, i have found that you need to set it to 2 cores (this will show as 4 cores on your task manager). After effects will see 4 cores total on your processor as the hyper threaded cores do not seem to count. So every 1 core that you set to render, it will use two on the task manager. I would make sure that you are rendering to a frame based coded - like DPX, that way if After effects has an error half way through your 20 hour render, you don't lose any of the allready rendered files and can continue where you left off.

 

[Jeremy Wiles]

In order for after effects to continuously use multiple cores, i have found that you need to set it to 2 cores (this will show as 4 cores on your task manager). After effects will see 4 cores total on your processor as the hyper threaded cores do not seem to count. So every 1 core that you set to render, it will use two on the task manager. I would make sure that you are rendering to a frame based coded - like DPX, that way if After effects has an error half way through your 20 hour render, you don't lose any of the allready rendered files and can continue where you left off.

Great! This cut about 30% off the final render time! I'm down to about 14 hours for a final render.

I'm using the Nvidia GTX 285 video card. Do you think it will help with rendering in AE if I add another GTX 285 card to my system?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Tom.Wong]

probably won't help much at all or if any. there IS opengl acceleration in AE, but anything in the video realm is pretty much all, cpu, ram, and disk intensive. the only boost you'll see if u do a lot of 3d work, ie maya, 3dsmax, mudbox, etc. i've read a lot that nobody has seen any performance increase in AE with a multitude of insane video cards, and SLI can cause instabilities. u'll probably see more of a performance increase in going to windows 7 when it comes out then you will with adding another video card.

 

[GiantVFX]

Go to the preferences HOLD down the SHIFT key. Keep holding it down as you go into the preference menu... you should have a new tab called SECRET... this is AE's secret menu... Click on Disable Layer cache and Purge every ONE frames during making the movie... this will save you time and prevent crashes.

 

[Jeremy Wiles]

Why would they create a menu then keep it a secret? I guess they have their reasons. I'll give this a try!

I have alot of pics set in 3d space. Does AE render only what is in the frame or everything that is floating around, even if it's not in the viewable frame?