Somewhat OT - faster encoding times?
by Ken Latman
on
Mar 4, 2008 at 9:32:18 pm
I have made the mistake of encoding my 30min comps to Animation codec causing some very large file sizes. If I encode in H264 the file is significantly smaller but the time almost doubles on my MacIntel Quad 2.6.
Is there anything that can speed up the encoding process? I have at home an Elgato Turbo, but that seems to be consumer grade and doesn't appear to work with AE.
ADS tech offers a product called the Pyro Kompressor HD card that is $3K. Has anyone used this product? Does it help in rapidly turning out video to burn to DVD? If so, how do I finagle it into the company budget?
Re: Somewhat OT - faster encoding times? by Paul Conigliaro on Mar 4, 2008 at 9:41:34 pm
As a rule, I almost always render out of AE uncompressed (or near uncompressed) and compress it later. I would render to lossless and if you have Final Cut Studio, use compressor to get the file size down.
If you're only occasionally needing to render to compressed codecs quickly, I wouldn't recommend a $3000 card.
Re: Somewhat OT - faster encoding times? by Ken Latman on Mar 4, 2008 at 10:08:42 pm
Thanks for the imput. I usually do the same (uncompress fine, run through compressor, etc) but the file sizes are becoming very large and I'm running out of hard drive space.
If there were just a way to speed up the process (famous words)
It seems like the conversion/encoding process is the most time consuming, even with Nucleo assisting in the process.
Re: Somewhat OT - faster encoding times? by Dave LaRonde on Mar 4, 2008 at 11:16:20 pm
[Ken Latman]"It seems like the conversion/encoding process is the most time consuming, even with Nucleo assisting in the process."
It's not the encoding. When you create a file in AE, the encoding adds a trivial amount time compared to RENDERING the image. Rendering is what takes the real time.
The point is this: if you're taking all that time rendering in AE, why not get the best you can out of it? That means a lossless or uncompressed file. And to tell the truth, AE doesn't do a really great job of compressing video. Its controls are pretty rudimentary. I say give those nice-looking AE files to an application which is a WHOLE lot better at compressing and encoding. Don't let AE screw it up when you have something like Compressor.
Re: Somewhat OT - faster encoding times? by Aharon Rabinowitz on Mar 5, 2008 at 12:07:49 am
Dave, I have to disagree with you on this. Depending on the codec, AE will slow down dramatically when rendering to a compressed format. Compression is very processor intensive. AE has to render the image and encode, and that can double your time in certain formats and codecs.
Sorenson squeeze is a great tool for compression, and it works alot faster than AE while giving you better quality and smaller file sizes.
Re: Somewhat OT - faster encoding times? by Ken Latman on Mar 5, 2008 at 1:00:03 am
So other than Nucelo Pro (which I have) is there any way to speed up the render times in AE and then the compression times in Apple Final Cut Compressor?
Thanks again for all your help.
Re: Somewhat OT - faster encoding times? by Paul Conigliaro on Mar 5, 2008 at 4:04:56 pm
The only way I know of to speed up compression times in Compressor is to have several machines on the network setup in Qmaster, which I'm not familiar enough with to do myself, let alone guide someone else in. Perhaps try the Final Cut boards for that?
