Slow or do I have unrealistic expectations?

refocusedmedia

refocusedmedia

Veteran
First off, here's the PC I'm working with:

AMD 1090T BE 6-core 3.2 GHz
16GB DDR3-1600 RAM
nVidia 470 1280MB gpu
Boot\app HDD = OCZ Vertex2 90GB SSD
Storage\media HDD = 3x 1.5TB RAID array running RAID5 with 3.0TB useable

I am new to AE, and am excited to get into it. I have been watching tuts on Videocopilot and others for awhile now, and finally decided to make my first composition. I created an 11-second intro comprised of about 10 layers... 3 PSDs with trakmatted texture, a particle layer, a Ramp BG, 2 text layers with bevel\glow effects, a 3D camera and null object combo, and an adjustment layer with motion blur (12 samples, 120 blur amount) that affects the 3 PSDs, particle, BG, and 2 text layers. This comp is 16 bpc.

I have disk cache enabled, and I have Adobe set to use 12GB (leaving 4GB for other apps); background CPUs = 2 and RAM per CPU = 2GB (total cores used = 4). I tried some other settings, but these seemed to work the best? I'm not sure and am open to adjusting this further. Also, I enabled the "Secret" menu and turned on the Video layer frame purging to every 2 frames.

So anyway... I cannot get this thing to render in under 55 minutes. No matter what settings I try, it always takes anywhere from 55 minutes to over 2 hours. So far the best I found was doing Best quality, Quicktime, Animation codec @ 100% (I'm sure I could get it faster with a lower quality setting, but I'm not willing to do that).

Is this normal? Is this bad\good? I'm very frustrated, but I'm wondering if that's simply because I had unrealistic expectations going into rendering my first AE comp. I expected it to take no more than 20-30 minutes, to be frank. Especially for a relatively simple, and short, comp. Anyway... I would really appreciate some advice, help, reassurance, or even criticism. Thanks for your time.
 
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That's a heck of an ambitious project right out of the gate. A typical user will start with something fairly simple like flying a line of text into the frame. This helps with understanding not only the fundamentals, but also how long AE takes to process simple animations.

10 layers... 3 PSDs with trakmatted texture, a particle layer, a Ramp BG, 2 text layers with bevel\glow effects, a 3D camera and null object combo, and an adjustment layer with motion blur (12 samples, 120 blur amount) that affects the 3 PSDs, particle, BG, and 2 text layers. This comp is 16 bpc.
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I expected it to take no more than 20-30 minutes, to be frank.
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What's the basis for your estimated rendering time?

You've made a soup by throwing everything in the kitchen cabinet into a pot. Now there's something wrong with the soup, but you don't know what it is. Fortunately with AE you can easily remove the ingrediaents one at a time to narrow down the problem. Try switching the project to 8 bpc and see what happens to the render times. What happens when you turn off motion blur? What happens when you turn off the particle layer or turn down the particles per second? Try turning off a layer and startimng the render to see how it affects the render time. Blurs, 3D cameras and particles can all increase the render time. Once you really start to understand AE you'll approach the entire process differently. Is a gausian blur necessary when a fast blur or box blur will render faster? Does this comp need to be in 3D or can I create the same effect in 2D? Should the comp be 16bpc or will 8bpc suffice?
 
It didn't feel all that ambitious. I've watched nearly all of videocopilot's tuts, and I simply took some of his ideas and created something relatively simple. The 3 PSDs form a logo... the logo falls into view (it starts out gaussian blurred and then gradually focuses as it falls into place), the camera tracks across it and then zooms out to reveal the entire logo. The camera then zooms out more in 3D space to reveal the word "PRESENTS", and then pans right 90 degrees to another text wall in 3D space. There are floating particles in the 3D space, and the motion blur is applied across the board, as I said. I'm using CC Force Motion Blur, not Gaussian.

I have no solid basis for my expectation, other than working with high-end video rendering in Premier, FCP, and other media production software. This is my first 3D engine however, unless you count photoshop, hah.

I guess I could switch it to 8 bpc, as I really don't understand the benefit. 16 bpc just looks a bit better (and apparently, is better). Thanks for that tip :)
 
You have I take it, played with the graphics/multi core rendering and ram allocation to each processor?
Sometimes I find rendering with OpenGL off when exporting can speed things up.
Im on an iMac, and would probably expect 20-30mins with my i7 4G. But its more a very rough estimate.
Also, when you render it helps to enable caps lock, so your not seeing every frame render.
I dont think the output drive matters, as its relatively low bit rate to the drive. But the read drive will play a more significant factor.
 
Also, when you render it helps to enable caps lock, so your not seeing every frame render.
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Huh?

The disk cache is on the 90GB SSD, which is also where the application and OS are installed. I have a separate 1.5TB 7200rpm mechanical drive I could set it to instead that is not apart of the RAID set, would that help you think?

I have played with the memory and MP settings, but honestly nothing seemed to improve it... I did find settings that made it worse though, lol. OpenGL rendering is not used (except for fast previews).
 
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lwright84 said:
Huh?

The disk cache is on the 90GB SSD, which is also where the application and OS are installed. I have a separate 1.5TB 7200rpm mechanical drive I could set it to instead that is not apart of the RAID set, would that help you think?

I have played with the memory and MP settings, but honestly nothing seemed to improve it... I did find settings that made it worse though, lol. OpenGL rendering is not used (except for fast previews).
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Just enable caps lock when you "Make Movie" and hit the render. It will disable the preview, which takes a tiny bit of CPU... but it will improve your render times by a few mins.
 
Cool, had no idea that was a real tip. I was trying to figure out how to disable render previews too, haha.

I'm going to try that tonight when I change the comp from 16bpc to 8bpc.

macgregor, I have no way of providing that at this time, sorry!
 
lwright84 said:
I guess I could switch it to 8 bpc, as I really don't understand the benefit. 16 bpc just looks a bit better (and apparently, is better). Thanks for that tip :)
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Yes, 16 bpc is better especially for smooth gradients. My point was more about strategy and real world work environments. If I have to crank out a dozen animations by noon tommorrow I'm going to look for efficiencies in the rendering process. If this is a personal project and I'm not on a deadline, I'll start the render and go have a beer or six.

Far too often I've seen inexperienced motion desingers paint themselves into a corner. The client will be in the office at 2pm in the afternoon to have a look at the work and there's still 12 hours left on ther render. Bad move.
 
Point taken, thanks! This is a personal project though.

I mean, if this is par for the course for a machine of my level, than I have no problem initiating the render and going off to do something else for a bit. Or even to start a render and then go to sleep and let it render tonight.

The thing that frustrated me was that I was wanting to knock out 2 renders (intro and an outro) last night. (EDIT: OMG I think I just realized what I did) I completed the first one, set it to render, and it finished in about 20-30 minutes, but the 7.5 second comp length ended up being too fast of an animation to really read the text. So, I went in and elongated the comp to 11 seconds and stretched out the keyframes to match. I also set it to 16 bpc because I read that it would make my ramp BG look better. Then I went to render again and the est time was 1.5 hours... I spent the rest of the night researching and testing various settings.

Also of note, my first attempt had twice the blur samples and intensity. Funny how I lowered that before thinking to change the bpc setting from 16 back down to 8.

UGH, I feel dumb. Thanks guys for your help. I will try this again when I get home and report back.
 
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lwright84 said:
Huh?

The disk cache is on the 90GB SSD, which is also where the application and OS are installed. I have a separate 1.5TB 7200rpm mechanical drive I could set it to instead that is not apart of the RAID set, would that help you think?

I have played with the memory and MP settings, but honestly nothing seemed to improve it... I did find settings that made it worse though, lol. OpenGL rendering is not used (except for fast previews).
Click to expand...

Do you have any benchmarks for the 'solid state device'. I would not use such a device for 'cache'.

In a more general note... I think the number of layers, the type of effects, is a significant chunk of work, and despite the 'high performanceness' of the system, there are many contributing factors to 'why lower than expected performance'.

There's a reason why for 'major motion picture' effects and CGI there's use of render farms to produce the results...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Do you have any benchmarks for the 'solid state device'. I would not use such a device for 'cache'.
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Why not? The Vertex2 is the fastest performing Sata2 HDD available. Is there some sort of unknown wierd issue with AE cache and SSD that I'm not aware of?

In a more general note... I think the number of layers, the type of effects, is a significant chunk of work, and despite the 'high performanceness' of the system, there are many contributing factors to 'why lower than expected performance'.
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Sure, that's exactly why I'm keeping my mind open to the idea that it's my amateur expectations that are the real culprit here, and is why I came here seeking additional advice, insight, and experience. :D
 
Looks like it was a combination of the motion blur, color depth, and possibly the codec.

First thing I did when I got home was change it back to 8 bpc, turned off the motion blur adjustment layer, and did a Quicktime MOV with Photo-JPEG codec @ 100% quality... entire comp rendered in 4 minutes flat, lol. I changed it back to 16 bpc and kept everything else the same... comp rendered in 5:07. Changed it back to 8 bpc and turned motion blur back on (even lowering the samples to 8, and blur value to 80), and the comp was sitting @ esitmated time remaining = 31 minutes before I killed it (probably would've been 45 minutes total render time). I'm going to try an uncompressed render here in a minute too, and see how that goes.

Thanks everyone for enduring my noobishness and helping out. Here is an example of the title sequence (keep in mind its my first one!) for anyone interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnOJ1cYCWp4
 
lwright84 said:
Why not? The Vertex2 is the fastest performing Sata2 HDD available. Is there some sort of unknown wierd issue with AE cache and SSD that I'm not aware of?
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Look up the following term: TRIM, described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

From what I read, some drivers do not do the 'trim' operation, or pass the 'trim' commands down to the driver level, yielding a degrading of performance on SSD 'hard disks'. Whether this is a contributor to your performance issue or not I don't know... but it's something to check out.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Look up the following term: TRIM, described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

From what I read, some drivers do not do the 'trim' operation, or pass the 'trim' commands down to the driver level, yielding a degrading of performance on SSD 'hard disks'. Whether this is a contributor to your performance issue or not I don't know... but it's something to check out.
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Ya I know about TRIM. I'm running Windows 7 and a Sandforce controller-based SSD, so its not an issue. That said, even a SSD without TRIM is exponentially higher performing than a mechanical drive (including 10k raptors, including RAID, etc).
 
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