AFTER EFFECTS : Real Time Preview at DVinfo.net

Amuthan Vethanayagam · March 10th, 2007, 10:37 AM

Hello,

I would like to have REAL TIME preview on After Effects 07.
How do i achieve it ? Even on RAM preview its not REAL TIME.
Please help me.

What is the best hardware accelerator for After Effects 07?
Suggestions please.

Thank you.

Cheers, Amuthan

Jim Montgomery · March 10th, 2007, 10:57 AM

Not going to happen. AE is terrible in its use of memory

Jim

Amuthan Vethanayagam · March 10th, 2007, 12:06 PM

Will it happen if I use Matrox Axio or AJA cards ??

Jeffrey Fuchs · March 10th, 2007, 03:36 PM

Amuthan,

See: http://www.dv.com/reviews/reviews_it...leId=196602729

In the above link it says:

"HDV editors have long faced difficulties in obtaining full-resolution preview from the timeline. The RT.X2 solves this neatly by offering a variety of display options. You can preview SD video in component, Y/C, or composite, and you can output HD in component or display it directly on an HDMI-compatible monitor via a DVI connector. In addition to previews from the Premiere Pro timeline, the RT.X2 includes plug-ins for real-time previews from Photoshop and After Effects. If you do a lot of HD work in After Effects, real-time previews may be worth the entire price of the RT.X2. The ability to see a full-resolution, pixel-for-pixel display from the After Effects composition timeline is stupendous, especially for critical applications such as bluescreen compositing or color correction. The preview output is easily switchable between HD and SD and 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. The live display to an HDMI monitor, an intriguing option, provides pixel-for-pixel display of full 1080 video for a relatively low price."

I am thinking of buying the RT.x2 for this very reason.

I hope this helps.

jeff

Peter Jefferson · March 11th, 2007, 06:27 AM

jeffrey, do not confuse Relatime "preview" with realtime editing..

the RT2 (and every other Matrox system) does NOT increase the performance of AE
IN fact, teh system is called WYSIWYG (what u see is what u get)
all it is, is an interface between the application and a breakout box so you can view your projects on an external monitor.

fair enough u can preview the whole lot in full res, but that DOESNT mean you will get full frame rate previews or realtime rendering...

the WYSIWYG plugin also works for other apps such as combustion... still though, it DOES NOT increase performance.. in fact it might even decrease performance due to matrox being such a resource hog (as is amlost every adobe product as well)

the only way to increase performance of AE and any ther opengl app, is to get yourself a kick ass gfx card.. and even with that, you STILL wont get full framerate with hd/hdv/uncompressed

Amuthan Vethanayagam · March 12th, 2007, 09:20 AM

Hi There,

Thank you for your reply.

The earlier version of RT X2 that is RTx100 had this feature. Even real time preview is really useful to observe the motion and determine the time of effect. As I haven't used an RT X2 I can't comment on its performance with AE.

Matrox highly depend on its Matrox MJPEG codec. It captures the video on it and plays back on it. Matrox MJEPG codec is as fast as PicVideo MJEPG codec.
I have installed MATROX codecs alone without the RT card and worked with them on Adobe Premiere platform. The speed was better than Microsoft DV Avi.

NOW with a Core 2 Due processor, Nividia 8800 GTX, 2 GiG RAM, 10000 RPM SATA2 I'm unsuccessful in obtaining a real time RAM Preview.
All I need is a 30 Sec to 2 Minute Real time preview to check my effects and motions. I can't render it and check it all the time. :(

I need some strong advice.

Do the MAC users get a real time preview of AE on their system? Then I wouldn't mind moving on to a MAC.

Amuthan

Peter Jefferson · March 12th, 2007, 06:28 PM

as i mentioned, you WILL NOT get realtime preview from AE.. with or without any matrox card.. it just doesnt work that way

Jim Montgomery · March 12th, 2007, 07:34 PM

Tried to tell 'em

Jim

Amuthan Vethanayagam · March 12th, 2007, 07:53 PM

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your reply.
Sorry for not listening to you. :) I understand the fact.

I'm using nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX expensive and top of the range Open GL prosumer VGA card. Still I don't see a big difference.

This is making me sick.

I did a control experiment on both AE7 and Premiere Pro2.
I executed the same simple motion graphic sequence in both.
I see a real time preview in Premiere Pro2 and but NOT getting same real time preview on AE7
This is frustrating me. Hope you could understand.

Sorry for making you sick. :)

Peter Jefferson · March 13th, 2007, 03:40 AM

I'm using nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX expensive and top of the range Open GL prosumer VGA card. Still I don't see a big difference.

((And you wont.. unless teh aplication in use is actually using hardware found on the baord itself.. which AE doesnt.. PrePro2 however, uses purevideo to decode and encode mpg... without it, it would be plain ol prempro1.5

"This is making me sick."

LOL
no, with a good gfx card, u can do alot.. there are afew fundamentals we need to clarify though..

Elemements of the PPRo2 engine is based on the use of your GFX card.. the gruntier the card, th more it can do, BUT this comes with a price... being that yoru video is then restricted to those GFX characteristics with the encoding/decoding nuances found within the hardware.. as an example, the Matrox RTx100 was notorious for aliasing.. (ie jaggies) and as this was a hardware issue, nothing much could be done about it..

same applies here..

Thing is the architecture of PPRo2 is designed with PC gfx cards in mind, so it WILL make a huge difference upon the gfx card youre using.. BUT if you run a card with dodgy antialiasing and you try do a digital zom, those jaggie (as an example) will exist in your video..

AE however, even though its an opengl application, will not use the gfx card (save from OpenGL itself)
It may use your GFX card memory buffer and bitrates do make a difference, but it wont use any of the actual hardware (ie polygonal CG generators)...
Remember that bits are far more valuable with these applications as oposed to memeory bandwidth itself..
Im runnning an AGP Nvidia6800GT 512mb ram with 256bit, and i still chunder away at 15fps with AEe.. If im lucky and im using a plugin such as MagicBullet2, then i'd get realtime playback and rendering..

Thing is, most apps require opengl anyway (such as combution, Maya, PI3, ZBrush... ) but not all use the chipset and avaliable grunt found on these cards..

Now of the ones that use the gfx card, are the ones that use specific chipsets found within the gfx card itself... such as Liquid (specifically its 3d texturemapped polygonal transitions and hollywood fx.. )prempro2 and particle illusion and the like..

With regard to your experiemnt, you will find this on many comparisons between the 2. if you can do it in premiere, do it, if not, your stuck with AE..

Amuthan Vethanayagam · April 5th, 2007, 11:04 PM

It’s working for me now. I followed all the instructions described by Adobe AE Manual. The real time preview I'm getting now is sufficient for my work. Thanks for all your advices.

Mark Morreau · April 7th, 2007, 03:25 PM

You may also want to look at Nucleo Pro from Gridiron, which basically renders away in the background to give you a more instant realtime preview. They call this spec preview. They have a trial version for download so you can see for yourself if it make any difference.
http://www.gridironsoftware.com/NucleoPro2/

HTH

Mark

Daniel Aleksic · April 9th, 2007, 09:12 AM

I get pretty good performance with the Matrox AXIO card but it is not realtime, it only helps you display it on your external monitor. The AJA card is only an I/O card and does not have accelleration. The only way to go is to have the most powerfull graphics card that you can have. I get even better performance on a standalong AE system that runs 2 nVidia 7950GX2 cards with the SLI bridge with 2 Opteron 285 CPU's (4 cores total). The 7950GX2 has 1GB each and 2 GPU's onboard. In SD I can get (depending on how many layers) realtime preview for the most part, in HD it may take a while (again, depending on how many layers you use).

Amuthan Vethanayagam · April 21st, 2007, 08:21 AM

DeckLink cards also includes an RGB QuickTime™ preview output for After Effects™ and Combustion™. And, you can always preview on the DeckLink video-out interactively as you work, and then play pre-renders using real time ram preview. When rendering your work, processing quality using the Blackmagic codec is full 16 bit, so you always get the advantage of 10 bit SDI video

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/workflow/

March 10th, 2007, 10:37 AM	#1
Amuthan Vethanayagam New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Melbourne VIC Australia Posts: 10	AFTER EFFECTS : Real Time Preview Hello, I would like to have REAL TIME preview on After Effects 07. How do i achieve it ? Even on RAM preview its not REAL TIME. Please help me. What is the best hardware accelerator for After Effects 07? Suggestions please. Thank you. Cheers, Amuthan

March 10th, 2007, 03:36 PM	#4
Jeffrey Fuchs Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Zimmerman, Minnesota Posts: 89	Look at RT.X2 Amuthan, See: http://www.dv.com/reviews/reviews_it...leId=196602729 In the above link it says: "HDV editors have long faced difficulties in obtaining full-resolution preview from the timeline. The RT.X2 solves this neatly by offering a variety of display options. You can preview SD video in component, Y/C, or composite, and you can output HD in component or display it directly on an HDMI-compatible monitor via a DVI connector. In addition to previews from the Premiere Pro timeline, the RT.X2 includes plug-ins for real-time previews from Photoshop and After Effects. If you do a lot of HD work in After Effects, real-time previews may be worth the entire price of the RT.X2. The ability to see a full-resolution, pixel-for-pixel display from the After Effects composition timeline is stupendous, especially for critical applications such as bluescreen compositing or color correction. The preview output is easily switchable between HD and SD and 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. The live display to an HDMI monitor, an intriguing option, provides pixel-for-pixel display of full 1080 video for a relatively low price." I am thinking of buying the RT.x2 for this very reason. I hope this helps. jeff

March 12th, 2007, 09:20 AM	#6
Amuthan Vethanayagam New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Melbourne VIC Australia Posts: 10	Real Time On Ae Hi There, Thank you for your reply. The earlier version of RT X2 that is RTx100 had this feature. Even real time preview is really useful to observe the motion and determine the time of effect. As I haven't used an RT X2 I can't comment on its performance with AE. Matrox highly depend on its Matrox MJPEG codec. It captures the video on it and plays back on it. Matrox MJEPG codec is as fast as PicVideo MJEPG codec. I have installed MATROX codecs alone without the RT card and worked with them on Adobe Premiere platform. The speed was better than Microsoft DV Avi. NOW with a Core 2 Due processor, Nividia 8800 GTX, 2 GiG RAM, 10000 RPM SATA2 I'm unsuccessful in obtaining a real time RAM Preview. All I need is a 30 Sec to 2 Minute Real time preview to check my effects and motions. I can't render it and check it all the time. :( I need some strong advice. Do the MAC users get a real time preview of AE on their system? Then I wouldn't mind moving on to a MAC. Amuthan

March 12th, 2007, 07:53 PM	#9
Amuthan Vethanayagam New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Melbourne VIC Australia Posts: 10	My Reply Hi Peter, Thank you for your reply. Sorry for not listening to you. :) I understand the fact. I'm using nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX expensive and top of the range Open GL prosumer VGA card. Still I don't see a big difference. This is making me sick. I did a control experiment on both AE7 and Premiere Pro2. I executed the same simple motion graphic sequence in both. I see a real time preview in Premiere Pro2 and but NOT getting same real time preview on AE7 This is frustrating me. Hope you could understand. Sorry for making you sick. :)

April 5th, 2007, 11:04 PM	#11
Amuthan Vethanayagam New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Melbourne VIC Australia Posts: 10	Thank you It’s working for me now. I followed all the instructions described by Adobe AE Manual. The real time preview I'm getting now is sufficient for my work. Thanks for all your advices.

March 10th, 2007, 10:57 AM	#2
Jim Montgomery Major Player Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Vero Beach Posts: 392	Not going to happen. AE is terrible in its use of memory Jim

March 10th, 2007, 12:06 PM	#3
Amuthan Vethanayagam New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Melbourne VIC Australia Posts: 10	Will it happen if I use Matrox Axio or AJA cards ??

March 11th, 2007, 06:27 AM	#5
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	jeffrey, do not confuse Relatime "preview" with realtime editing.. the RT2 (and every other Matrox system) does NOT increase the performance of AE IN fact, teh system is called WYSIWYG (what u see is what u get) all it is, is an interface between the application and a breakout box so you can view your projects on an external monitor. fair enough u can preview the whole lot in full res, but that DOESNT mean you will get full frame rate previews or realtime rendering... the WYSIWYG plugin also works for other apps such as combustion... still though, it DOES NOT increase performance.. in fact it might even decrease performance due to matrox being such a resource hog (as is amlost every adobe product as well) the only way to increase performance of AE and any ther opengl app, is to get yourself a kick ass gfx card.. and even with that, you STILL wont get full framerate with hd/hdv/uncompressed

March 12th, 2007, 06:28 PM	#7
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	as i mentioned, you WILL NOT get realtime preview from AE.. with or without any matrox card.. it just doesnt work that way

March 12th, 2007, 07:34 PM	#8
Jim Montgomery Major Player Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Vero Beach Posts: 392	Tried to tell 'em Jim

March 13th, 2007, 03:40 AM	#10
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	I'm using nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX expensive and top of the range Open GL prosumer VGA card. Still I don't see a big difference. ((And you wont.. unless teh aplication in use is actually using hardware found on the baord itself.. which AE doesnt.. PrePro2 however, uses purevideo to decode and encode mpg... without it, it would be plain ol prempro1.5 "This is making me sick." LOL no, with a good gfx card, u can do alot.. there are afew fundamentals we need to clarify though.. Elemements of the PPRo2 engine is based on the use of your GFX card.. the gruntier the card, th more it can do, BUT this comes with a price... being that yoru video is then restricted to those GFX characteristics with the encoding/decoding nuances found within the hardware.. as an example, the Matrox RTx100 was notorious for aliasing.. (ie jaggies) and as this was a hardware issue, nothing much could be done about it.. same applies here.. Thing is the architecture of PPRo2 is designed with PC gfx cards in mind, so it WILL make a huge difference upon the gfx card youre using.. BUT if you run a card with dodgy antialiasing and you try do a digital zom, those jaggie (as an example) will exist in your video.. AE however, even though its an opengl application, will not use the gfx card (save from OpenGL itself) It may use your GFX card memory buffer and bitrates do make a difference, but it wont use any of the actual hardware (ie polygonal CG generators)... Remember that bits are far more valuable with these applications as oposed to memeory bandwidth itself.. Im runnning an AGP Nvidia6800GT 512mb ram with 256bit, and i still chunder away at 15fps with AEe.. If im lucky and im using a plugin such as MagicBullet2, then i'd get realtime playback and rendering.. Thing is, most apps require opengl anyway (such as combution, Maya, PI3, ZBrush... ) but not all use the chipset and avaliable grunt found on these cards.. Now of the ones that use the gfx card, are the ones that use specific chipsets found within the gfx card itself... such as Liquid (specifically its 3d texturemapped polygonal transitions and hollywood fx.. )prempro2 and particle illusion and the like.. With regard to your experiemnt, you will find this on many comparisons between the 2. if you can do it in premiere, do it, if not, your stuck with AE..

April 7th, 2007, 03:25 PM	#12
Mark Morreau Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Kentish Town, London, UK Posts: 157	You may also want to look at Nucleo Pro from Gridiron, which basically renders away in the background to give you a more instant realtime preview. They call this spec preview. They have a trial version for download so you can see for yourself if it make any difference. http://www.gridironsoftware.com/NucleoPro2/ HTH Mark

April 9th, 2007, 09:12 AM	#13
Daniel Aleksic New Boot Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 9	I get pretty good performance with the Matrox AXIO card but it is not realtime, it only helps you display it on your external monitor. The AJA card is only an I/O card and does not have accelleration. The only way to go is to have the most powerfull graphics card that you can have. I get even better performance on a standalong AE system that runs 2 nVidia 7950GX2 cards with the SLI bridge with 2 Opteron 285 CPU's (4 cores total). The 7950GX2 has 1GB each and 2 GPU's onboard. In SD I can get (depending on how many layers) realtime preview for the most part, in HD it may take a while (again, depending on how many layers you use).

April 21st, 2007, 08:21 AM	#14
Amuthan Vethanayagam New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Melbourne VIC Australia Posts: 10	What Decklink has to say DeckLink cards also includes an RGB QuickTime™ preview output for After Effects™ and Combustion™. And, you can always preview on the DeckLink video-out interactively as you work, and then play pre-renders using real time ram preview. When rendering your work, processing quality using the Blackmagic codec is full 16 bit, so you always get the advantage of 10 bit SDI video http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/workflow/