After Effects SLOW export at DVinfo.net

William Holland · November 6th, 2009, 12:10 PM

I am at a client's place right now working on a basic corporate animation. the animation is about 3 minutes long, and merely requires a series of objects to appear and have a connectivity animation move between them along a motion path. Pretty simple stuff.

This animation is nested in another timeline which I simply zoom in and out of where it is needed. Think of it as a 2d camera cheat.

On my PC at home, something like this would export very quickly, but on my macbook its dragging. I have tried bouncing to flv, quicktime, uncompressed, etc. Now, animation seems to work better than h264 in quicktime, but I am now trying flv, which is a little bit faster.

This is last season's white macbook. Now, I know CPU and RAM are huge issues, but I have rendered similar stuff out of motion with motion blur and lighting and not had a problem (half hour to hour render time at 2minutes of footage). In After Effects, my render times have gone from six up to now 13 hours. Any thoughts on how I could improve this workflow? What might be slowing my machine down?

Aric Mannion · November 9th, 2009, 03:26 PM

I don't know, but some things that can really slow down a render are:

Blur, such as motion or lens blur
Frame blending due to speed adjustment
Cameras

I wouldn't even bother using a laptop for those effects. Also rendering an h264 is slower due to compression. And you probably know that the ETA After Effects gives you is based on the frame it is currently rendering not the overall animation.

November 6th, 2009, 12:10 PM	#1
William Holland Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 28	After Effects SLOW export I am at a client's place right now working on a basic corporate animation. the animation is about 3 minutes long, and merely requires a series of objects to appear and have a connectivity animation move between them along a motion path. Pretty simple stuff. This animation is nested in another timeline which I simply zoom in and out of where it is needed. Think of it as a 2d camera cheat. On my PC at home, something like this would export very quickly, but on my macbook its dragging. I have tried bouncing to flv, quicktime, uncompressed, etc. Now, animation seems to work better than h264 in quicktime, but I am now trying flv, which is a little bit faster. This is last season's white macbook. Now, I know CPU and RAM are huge issues, but I have rendered similar stuff out of motion with motion blur and lighting and not had a problem (half hour to hour render time at 2minutes of footage). In After Effects, my render times have gone from six up to now 13 hours. Any thoughts on how I could improve this workflow? What might be slowing my machine down?

November 9th, 2009, 03:26 PM	#2
Aric Mannion Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Boston, Massachusetts Posts: 616	I don't know, but some things that can really slow down a render are: Blur, such as motion or lens blur Frame blending due to speed adjustment Cameras I wouldn't even bother using a laptop for those effects. Also rendering an h264 is slower due to compression. And you probably know that the ETA After Effects gives you is based on the frame it is currently rendering not the overall animation.