Rendering Problems
by Hugo Espinel
on
Jun 18, 2008 at 6:13:23 am
Hi guys,
We just got After Effects and something is not going as it should, let me try to explain.
We got After Effects because of its rendering capabilities. Eventually we want to put a lot of segments to batch render overnight. In fact, on this particular assignment we are applying no effects, no editing at all we just need to convert them.
I am working with a PC. I am queued rendering about ten clips no more than three minutes long each.
If I render them individually everything goes well but if I try to batch render all of them, the first one to render goes through fine, the other ones are incomplete and finish with errors.
Most of the times the application crashes after this process.
It does not matter what kind of files it is dealing with. Same problem occurs with MPEGs or WMV files.
It does not matter what kind of rendering settings I am using. The error persists.
Any help on this regard would be highly appreciated.
Re: Rendering Problems by Dave LaRonde on Jun 18, 2008 at 3:27:31 pm
[Hugo Espinel]"It does not matter what kind of files it is dealing with. Same problem occurs with MPEGs or WMV files. "
It may very well matter what kinds of files AE is dealing with, especially those MPEGs. Read on to see if this common problem applies to you:
Dave's Stock Answer #1:
If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following -- Native HDV, MPEG1, MPEG2, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 -- you need to convert it to a different codec.
These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.
In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Rendering Problems by Hugo Espinel on Jun 20, 2008 at 5:46:22 pm
Hi guys,
Having in mind your responses I experimented with .MOV files. AE rendered them well; It worked.
Now, this is not good news for us at Sesame Street. We have all these WMV files that need to be converted to MPEG2 (Cell phone content).
According to the software specifications AE is supposed to be able to handle this kind of files.(http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402250&sliceId=1) It would very disappointing if that is not the case.
Again, we got After Effects because of its rendering capabilities. Eventually we want to put a lot of segments to batch render overnight: no effects, no editing at all, we just need to convert them.
So what you guys are saying is that there is not a proper/effective way to make AE render files coming from WMV files?
Our whole issue here is efficiency so if we have to convert the files in order to be accepted by AE' this process would be completely pointless for us ( As we are dealing with hundreds of segments)
Thank you again your help.
Hugo
Re: Rendering Problems by Dave LaRonde on Jun 20, 2008 at 9:11:08 pm
[Hugo Espinel]"...this is not good news for us at Sesame Street. We have all these WMV files that need to be converted to MPEG2 (Cell phone content). According to the software specifications AE is supposed to be able to handle this kind of files."
Ah. Thanks for the clarification.
Instead of After Effects, I would recommend third-party compression software like Sorenson Squeeze, which I'm pretty sure runs on Windows boxes. Not only will such software do a better job making MPEG2 files than AE, it can also do batch processing -- get a lot of files set to go, hit the "compress" button, and go home to find your new files ready in the morning.
Unfortunately, Adobe occasionally gilds the lily when it comes to software capabilities, and your situation is a case in point. There are others:
� Open GL Support -- yes, AE does support Open GL... but only a subset, making this feature virtually useless.
� MP3 Files -- AE will let you use mp3 audio in a comp. It's handy for timing video animation to other audio. But God help you if you try to render that audio out: it sounds horrible.
� Supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 formats (MPEG, MPE, MPG, M2V, MPA, MP2, M2A, MPV, M2P, M2T, AC3, MP4, M4V, M4A) -- I don't even know how Adobe gets off making that claim. People have all kinds of problems working with these kinds of files in AE.
Now don't get me wrong, I use AE all the time. It's great software, and I wouldn't be without it. If you delve into its capabilities, you may be very pleasantly surprised. Check out some of the After Effects podcasts here on the COW for a taste of what it can do. But it's always best to use the right tool for the job, and for this job, I wouldn't use AE.
.....oooohhhhh, I can't resist it! Say hello to The Count for me. He's my favorite.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Rendering Problems by jack westburg on Jun 30, 2008 at 6:34:50 pm
I don't have experience using AE to export mpegs, but after quick glance it looks like the options it provides for are on par with other compression software.
For you're job, my first choice would've been Cleaner.
Squeeze is on par with cleaner, but I don't like it's clunky interface and sluggish performance on mac.
AE is great for rotating and up-sampling (some compression software/codecs do a poor job of resizing creating pixelated images, and most cannot rotate the picture)
AE can output a variety of containers and codecs BUT it does not go a good job of using those codecs to compress the file size. (ie: you would get a smaller file size with the same quality using a program actually meant for compression). This is based on my experience with MOV containers, perhaps AE handles mpegs more efficiently.
