AE Rendering left me wondering...

[eraserhead_in_time]

Hi Guys,
I have been using AE CS4 to render some clips captured by Sony HDR XR100 which records in AVCHD format at 1080i.
I was just doing some test renders with an adjustement layer over a 1min clip. Only Effect I applied was Magic Bullet Looks. And it was taking 1hr 20mins to render. After reading on this forum, I converted the clip using Neoscene Demo version and it brought down the time to around 20mins!! Massive Improvement I must say.
However I'm wondering if it is still too much for a 1min clip with just Looks applied.
I run a AMD QUad COre with 4gigs RAM..Running Vista..
Is this the normal time taken to render out 1min clip or Am I using the render settings wrong? I used Video for Windows that gave me uncompressed AVI mammoth file.
can you tell me some more tips to use render settings effeciently please?
Is Magic Bullet really heavy on the system? Should I just stick to basic color correction?

I'm planning to shooting a feature soon and if this is how long it will take...I might have to reconsider my workflow and work in short sequences....dunoo

Thanks for taking your time out and reading

Aashay

Namaste

 

[Will Vincent]

What video card do you have? Magic Bullet will utilize the processor of the video card with certain cards, this makes a huge difference in render time.

See the Video Cards section here: http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-looks/compatibility/

4gig is a pretty small amount of memory for any HD post work. When you use up the memory it has to swap to disk, this increases render times massively... Best thing you could do is get a lot more ram and a higher end video card. But yes, it will still be slow. HD footage contains a lot of pixels to process.

For reference, I've got a quad core i7 920 running at 3.8GHz with 12 gig of ram, and renders in AE with HD footage take a good deal of time.

I haven't used cs5 yet, but since it supports 64bit in AE now, that would make a huge difference in rendering as well. But, the bottom line is, expect your renders to take a significant amount of time

 

[eraserhead_in_time]

Thanks a lot Will. That gives me some perspective. I have a ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 with 512mb DDR5 which seems alright from the Red Giant Page, but since even your monster pc takes time I guess its ok.
I will try to increase RAM size even more and yea upgrading to CS5 seems like a good solution cz all my friennds are saving its really fast.

What format do you output from AE after all the post? Uncompressedd avi files give me 2gig files 1.5mins video which seems impractical even if you have 1tb space.
Is there any format which seems to balance quality/size aspect well?

Is downconverting my files to 720p a good solution to get a faster workflow without using too much in resolution?

Thanks once again

Namaste

What video card do you have? Magic Bullet will utilize the processor of the video card with certain cards, this makes a huge difference in render time.

See the Video Cards section here: http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-looks/compatibility/

4gig is a pretty small amount of memory for any HD post work. When you use up the memory it has to swap to disk, this increases render times massively... Best thing you could do is get a lot more ram and a higher end video card. But yes, it will still be slow. HD footage contains a lot of pixels to process.

For reference, I've got a quad core i7 920 running at 3.8GHz with 12 gig of ram, and renders in AE with HD footage take a good deal of time.

I haven't used cs5 yet, but since it supports 64bit in AE now, that would make a huge difference in rendering as well. But, the bottom line is, expect your renders to take a significant amount of time

 

[Will Vincent]

What format do you output from AE after all the post? Uncompressedd avi files give me 2gig files 1.5mins video which seems impractical even if you have 1tb space.
Is there any format which seems to balance quality/size aspect well?

Its been a while be as I recall I exported back to the cineform codec last time. Obviously uncompressed is the nicest option, but only if you have the space, and it's got to be RAID because that's a LOT of bandwidth.

Is downconverting my files to 720p a good solution to get a faster workflow without using too much in resolution?

That depends on your final delivery format. Are you making blue ray discs? If not then there's probably not a huge reason to keep it in 1080 all the way through post. On the other hand, it's nice to have that option in the future.

If you're just burning standard def dvds, it doesn't matter.. if you're going to be projecting HD onto a 30 foot high theater screen, keep it as high res as you can.

 

[eraserhead_in_time]

Thanks Will. You my friend are a legend!
I guess I'll try and keep it as high res as possible. I dont know if you are familiar with RebelDV by Stu..but he suggests that we should break our movie into 10-15mins segment and render it that way..makes sense to me as well because i know now about computing power it will take..
So my question to you is... How?
Do you I make them such (10mins seq) in Premiere and take it to AE for rendering?
He also suggests that the output should be TIFF since its uncompressed and gives very good quality. But then how do I combine audio with it?

Is your workflow similiar or do you use Premiere for rendering movies itself?

Namaste