Speed up Render times and efficiency
by Derek Hader
on
Apr 23, 2008 at 5:56:27 pm
Hey All,
I've been running AE CS3 and 7.0 on Windows (I also cut DV/HD footage on PProCS3/2.0). I have a typical set-up, nothing too fancy. For storage I just add another external 500 GB Firewire or USB drive whenever necessary.
I came back from NAB with the intent of learning more about two things, and their potential to speed up workflow.
1. Grid Iron Nucleo Pro
2. More efficient storage options
I saw an impressive demonstration for Grid Iron's software... are those of you who have it satisfied with your investment?
Also I'm curious to user reaction to RAID/SATA storage options. I looked at the G Speed eS, and the 3ware Sidecar. These 2 seem to be within a decent price range. But my question to those who know is, will they actually make a difference in render times? Pros/cons?
And any other recommendations anyone has is greatly welcomed!
Re: Speed up Render times and efficiency by Ron Coy on Apr 23, 2008 at 8:15:43 pm
the hardware RAIDs won't help at all with rendering, but might make accessing video footage a bit faster and smoother. RAID is mainly concerned with either having large volumes for storage, fast throughput, and/or data backup and redundancy.
None of which will improve render times.
As far as GridIron, I'm no expert. I really don't get it though... I want all my machine available for the task at hand. If I needed to work and render at the same time, I'd set up network rendering on another machine, but your mileage may vary.
Re: Speed up Render times and efficiency by Lars Bunch on Apr 23, 2008 at 10:41:58 pm
Hi,
As mentioned above, the RAID isn't gonna do a whole lot for speed. You might get tiny benefits from using it for your scratch disc as well as file access times. If you are doing work in HD then it may be necessary if for no other reason than to be able to see your animations play back in real time.
You can get pretty inexpensive RAID setup if you are not too concerned about losing data if a drive fails. I use a couple of Burley Port Multiplier boxes and a CalDigit eSATA controller for a JBOD and a RAID setup. These can be found at http://www.macgurus.com/
As for Nucleo Pro, obviously if you only have a single processor, it ain't gonna help too much. With more cores plus memory, you get a really good performance boost. The nice thing is that when you send a render job to it, the background render works in "nice" mode (at least on OS-X). What this means is that if your foreground process needs the processors, the background will be nice and scale back while you are working. Yes, this slows down the background render, but it means that the system is still responsive in the foreground. And of course if you pause to get a cup of coffee, the background renders will speed up again.
Also if your work flow requires getting an animation to an editor in the next bay while you still need to continue on another animation, Nucleo Pro will let you keep working. (Yes, you could fire up the command line renderer, but this is easier.) If you tend to build the animations and then render over-night, then maybe Nucleo isn't going to help you too much, but in my case it has been very helpful.
My opinion is that Nucleo Pro is the best plug-in I have bought for AE (and I have plenty of pretty good plugins.)
If you need to speed up your renders, you may want to look into adding memory. I currently have 2Gigs per core and that seems to be working pretty well for me since AE cannot access more than 3Gigs per core in a background render. I could still add more memory, but looking at the processor and memory load during renders, I don't think it would help to go beyond 2 per core.
Re: Speed up Render times and efficiency by Steve Forde on Apr 24, 2008 at 2:59:30 pm
I don't usually post in threads like this - would rather you folks talk about the product without our interference, for better or worse. (for objectivity etc).
---forgive the shameless plug---
Just wanted to pass along - IF there is interest in purchasing the product - it is 20% off until midnight tonight (april 24th) EDT. Thought based on the response might save you a few bucks.
Re: Speed up Render times and efficiency by adeeb oberoi on Sep 4, 2008 at 3:07:24 am
Hi, I have a dell core2duo, 2.6, I have three gigs but I believe I need to change something in the boot ini folder?
Can you please advice me what to do, and if this in my case is going to help? I use a lot of zaxwerk 3d plugins and need to speed things up.
Thx & regards,
