after effects 6.5 pro rendering question
by coady2000
on
Aug 29, 2006 at 2:15:48 pm
I am rendering out an hour and 45 minute MP2. This project is made up of alot of little clips (avi's) I have made. My question is:
Is it typical for a project to say its going to take 36 hours to render?
I did a similar one a few days ago...around 2 hours or less was the size of the comp, and it only took a few hours.
What I have used mainly on each avi within the project has been scale...levels.....and photo filter. On a few of the avi's i did use the remove grain effect due to horrible 1980's footage!
Any thoughts? Do I just let it render and go about my business? Or is there a trick that I am missing??
Re: after effects 6.5 pro rendering question by Dave LaRonde on Aug 29, 2006 at 3:38:40 pm
[coady2000]"Any thoughts? Do I just let it render and go about my business?"
Before you go a-renderin' for 36 hours, try this:
In your comp, set the work area to one of those clips containing the remove grain effect. You don't need much, just a minute. Render it out and note the time.
Now make a duplicate of the comp. Remove the remove grain effect completely from the clip in question. Don't just turn it off, get rid of the effect. Render this comp and note the time.
I think you'll find that Remove Grain is a render-intensive effect, and if you're using it a lot, it will slow things waaaay down.
If you use Remove Grain on clips near the head of the comp, AE is doing its best to estimate remaining time based on the frames on which it's working. It doesn't know that Remove Grain shows up only occasionally in the comp. So its estimate will be off.
Now let's say you have a different comp. The first ten minutes are single layers only, where you're simply adjusting the levels on the clips. But oh, that last five minutes of the comp! You've got 20 3D layers, motion blurs, multiple effects per layer, frame blending and multiple lights going on! As AE begins to render, it's thinking to itself, "Hey, this is a piece of cake! I can zip right through this!". It's estimate of render time reflect this.
That is, of course, until AE encouters that last section of your comp. Then a 15-minute render turns into two to three hours. Again, AE's estimate of remaining time was off. And it's estimate of remaining time gets longer and longer as each frame progresses.
The lesson: AE's estimate of time remaining is just that: an estimate, not a set-in-stone prediction. You need to take into account what's going on in the comp, and only you know that. AE doesn't. Knowledge like that simply comes with experience in working with AE.
