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After Effect help - NooB (hardware)

matteusclement

matteusclement

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 26, 2008
1,144
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victoria
I just started using after effects and while I grasp the front end stuff just like Premiere, the back end stuff seems to be lagging. I am using AE on PC and Mac.
How can optimize the speed of AE?

For example, AE seems to hate media files on seperate drives. I have a RAID 0 that I could put all my media on. Does that seem right?

Also, it took me 20 minutes last night to export a 10 second HDTV 1080 30p AVI file. I don't need the 1.8GB file it pumped out. I am shooting on a t2i and can get by with that quality.

The mac is a quad core with a ati 4870 with 8 gigs ram
The PC is a quad core (q9550) with 8 gigs ram & gtx 470
Both have raid 0 (2x1TB WD black)
 
Check the After Effects "memory and multi processing" preferences. Then look at your composition "render settings" and output codec. All of this is fairly well explained in the user manual.

Most probably you rendered out your composition at full quality in a lossless codec. For source media AE should be happy with most formats except sometimes with MPEG files. Also, be careful of the effects you use in a composition, as well as lighting, 3D, and motion blur. All of these can significantly burden render times depending on render settings, composition size, media size/format...

PS I see you have 8 GB RAM which works OK, but After Effects likes a lot of RAM.
 
What codec do the source files you use in AE use?

I see speed reduction (playback, rendering) when using highly compressed video using some MPEG-4 codec variant compared to an editing codec like DNxHD or ProRes. But I still use C2D Macs, thus it is generally slow.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
What codec do the source files you use in AE use?

I see speed reduction (playback, rendering) when using highly compressed video using some MPEG-4 codec variant compared to an editing codec like DNxHD or ProRes. But I still use C2D Macs, thus it is generally slow.
Click to expand...

He said he was shooting a t2i so it is h.264.

OP -

It all matters on how complex you animation is, what effects you are using, etc. I had a 5 second project that took 4 hours + to render.
 
WRP said:
He said he was shooting a t2i so it is h.264.

OP -

It all matters on how complex you animation is, what effects you are using, etc. I had a 5 second project that took 4 hours + to render.
Click to expand...

Ah, I was confused, because Matt talked about an .avi file, and yes, I agree about the complexity.
While I had no such render times yet, I can easily pump it up the more layers and effects I have. Or just one simple effect.
 
thank you all.

here was the video: http://vimeo.com/37533037

yes, it was lossless. Once I went and mucked with the render settings (already had CPU + RAM settings correct), it was way faster (3-5mins).

thank you all for the advice. The openGL use in the render settings made a big difference too!
 
Did you enable motion blur for all those layers? It will extend render time by a lot, but I think it will help make it seem more "realistic". Remember, anything that moves should have motion blur as a general rule.
 
One thing, did you want that pixel text to look like that?
Or was that a pixel layer used as a matte?
Just wondering out loud.
 
WRP - no motion blur. but I will try it with it to see how it looks.

mBox - psd file. fastest way i knew how to get it to be transparent. Like I said, new to the game. is there a better way of doing it? :confused:
 
matteusclement said:
...psd file. fastest way i knew how to get it to be transparent...
Click to expand...
Many options that support Alpha under Edit > Templates > Output Modules.
here you can create a render output at any format supported.
For me it was SGI and TIFF (bad habits never die).
They all do 32bit.

P.s. thats bit 8bit TIFF not 16bit.
 
mBox said:
Many options that support Alpha under Edit > Templates > Output Modules.
here you can create a render output at any format supported.
For me it was SGI and TIFF (bad habits never die).
They all do 32bit.

P.s. thats bit 8bit TIFF not 16bit.
Click to expand...

again... I am a newb here. what does everything you just said mean in english?
 
matteusclement said:
again... I am a newb here. what does everything you just said mean in english?
Click to expand...
Sorry for that. Yes arjen is correct there are different formats for outputting from AE. And since you mentioned transparency I had to had 32bit which is RGB and A (alpha channel).
Thats 8bit for each R, G, B and A.
I mentioned the 8bit cause Ive seen students and others accidentally turn on 16bit and complain about oddities.
Where you find this is in preferences or at the bottom of Project window.
You will see 8bpc hopefully and not 16bpc.
I go with TIFF these days for sequential frames. That supports 32bit color.
SGI was the older one due to working in Alias and now Autodesk Maya.
All that crap I just talked about also holds for video but different codecs/formats.
If you really want to learn about formats, read up on Photoshop.
Its the first app I push on students.
That app has the most codecs/formats to deal with.
Sure its not a video/motion design app but a great starter for this field.
 
mBox said:
Sorry for that. Yes arjen is correct there are different formats for outputting from AE. And since you mentioned transparency I had to had 32bit which is RGB and A (alpha channel).
Thats 8bit for each R, G, B and A.
I mentioned the 8bit cause Ive seen students and others accidentally turn on 16bit and complain about oddities.
Where you find this is in preferences or at the bottom of Project window.
You will see 8bpc hopefully and not 16bpc.
I go with TIFF these days for sequential frames. That supports 32bit color.
SGI was the older one due to working in Alias and now Autodesk Maya.
All that crap I just talked about also holds for video but different codecs/formats.
If you really want to learn about formats, read up on Photoshop.
Its the first app I push on students.
That app has the most codecs/formats to deal with.
Sure its not a video/motion design app but a great starter for this field.
Click to expand...

I think I have poorly explained why I did it with photoshop.... I simply didn't know HOW to do it in AE. Is there a tutorial you can point me towards? I wouldn't even know what this would be called.

In PS, I just took a white layer, placed rasterized type overtop of it and then CUT out the type using a "select color" tool. (God, writing that out, it sounds so crude LOL)
 
matteusclement said:
I think I have poorly explained why I did it with photoshop.... I simply didn't know HOW to do it in AE. Is there a tutorial you can point me towards? I wouldn't even know what this would be called.

In PS, I just took a white layer, placed rasterized type overtop of it and then CUT out the type using a "select color" tool. (God, writing that out, it sounds so crude LOL)
Click to expand...

Do you mean like this?
2012_02_29_pC1_AEtransparenttext.png

Btw, if you have a layer you want to cut a text out in Photoshop, just CMD click on the layer icon in the layer palette in PS, thus you have a layer selection, and that can be applied to another layer by selecting that other layer and pressing delete.
 
matteusclement said:
I think I have poorly explained why I did it with photoshop.... I simply didn't know HOW to do it in AE. Is there a tutorial you can point me towards? I wouldn't even know what this would be called.

In PS, I just took a white layer, placed rasterized type overtop of it and then CUT out the type using a "select color" tool. (God, writing that out, it sounds so crude LOL)
Click to expand...
We're all here to help :)
This is the layer you used as a mask for the video right?
The one I was asking about pixel jaggies.
You don't need to use PS for font unless its an odd designed typeface e.g. logo.
But its a regular font that you can create within AE then you should use that as your Mask or in this case your Travel Matte layer.
Fonts within AE are vector at start.
Scale that using the scale options in properties.
As Im writing this simsalad just uploaded an example for you :)
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Do you mean like this?
2012_02_29_pC1_AEtransparenttext.png

Btw, if you have a layer you want to cut a text out in Photoshop, just CMD click on the layer icon in the layer palette in PS, thus you have a layer selection, and that can be applied to another layer by selecting that other layer and pressing delete.
Click to expand...

DOH!
I even saw that in the AE tutorials I watched!
Thank you.

Vector based > pixel based.
 
But wait! Multiple layers!

simsaladimbamba said:
I agree, but video is pixel based anyway, if you refer to the PS method?
Click to expand...

Yes.

Keep in mind that I had several layers flying under that text at the time. How do I make it transparent to several layers? or do I do something similiar to "nesting"?
 
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