computer crash during render!

First off, wow, what are you rendering out of After Effects that has a 3 day render time. Surely there has to be a way to cut that down.

But to answer your question, I don't know. I feel as though it's not still rendering in the background though. So you're likely going to have to restart. And I'm assuming since you asking this question in the first place that you're not rendering out to image sequences. Do yourself a favor and remedy that immediately.

 

Reading your video files off of USB 2 is definitely problematic. How many video streams are there? Are you able to precomp anything and render that out first?

Yeah, that sounds unusable. I'm assuming you were maxing out some quality settings there and turning on all sorts of goodies like GI.

 

Ok, so I don't use Adobe Media Encoder, but I thought I'd give it a quick look to see if I could help you out. Which version are you running? I did my little test on CS6. I dragged my AE file into the queue window, and when the dynamic relink synced up, then selected the comp I wanted to render. From there I saw four columns (Format, Preset, Output File, Status). Under "Format" I selected Targa (Tiff would be another good choice). Under "Preset" I selected HD 1080p 29.97 sequence since those are my comp settings. And then under "Output File" I obviously just selected the the folder where I wanted my images to go. Then hit the Start Queue button up top and everything seemed to work fine. Are these the steps you are taking?

I also have CS 5.5 installed and tried that one out too to see if it's the same. The layout is a little different, but it still works the same. I did notice though, that on the CS 5.5 version, if you select a still image format, then "Export As Sequence" isn't turned on by default. For that you'll have to click on your preset link, navigate to the Video tab of the export settings and turn it on there.




As for your C4D stuff, I would seriously look into techniques on simulating indirect lighting if you're going to be doing animations. GI is a rendering hog and it's also tricky getting it right with moving images. Also, motion blur is a killer too. There are some great 3rd party post effects in AE or other compositing programs that will do a good enough job in a fraction of the time.

 

No, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary when saving my AE project.

I actually created the project just to try this out. So I would try just creating a very simple project from scratch and bringing that into Media Encoder to see if you have the same issue. That way you can at least eliminate whether or not the problem is file specific. I don't believe it is, but might as well test it anyway.

I simply created a new project and comp, threw a layer into the comp and keyframed it across the timeline, then saved.

 

i'm not using media composer, because it always seemed buggy / prone to crash to me.

you are getting the same insane rendering times when doing a ram-preview in after effects, right ?

i don't think that the usb 2.0 / firewire 400 should make a difference in this case.

before adobe allowed background rendering via media encoder there were some plugins / scripts, etc... that did background rendering inside after effects - maybe there's a way to use one of those.

 

What model iMac are you on? 2009 dual core with 4gb ram?

If you check your render settings in AE, do you get more options? (image sequences, quicktime, etc)

Strange how you dont have those options in AME.

My inital thought is that you are rendering to an h.264 file.. that is a death sentance. I tend to export to a higher quality file (usually pro res 422HQ or 4444) then compress it again to what I need for delivery (for small approval files, web use, etc)

I would suggest pre-rendering some of your elements..

Meaning.. if you have video being used with effects.. isolate that layer or layers, render it, bring it back into your comp and turn off the original layers or comp that the render came from..

Repeat this process for the areas you can.. doing this will cut down dramtically on your render time.

And yes.. havign a drive hooked up via USB 2 would make a difference.. faster the connection and the speed of the drive are factors.

Also.. I think you could have too many settings/effects cranked way too high. IE, how many samples on your motion blurs? perhaps drop those to 8, or down to a number that doesnt dramtically impact your project, but saves on render time.

I've attached a preset from premiere/AME.. I copied a standard preset for a 1920x1080 24 fps PNG sequence. you have to change the extension from .zip to .epr