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lukep11364996
Participating Frequently
November 11, 2022
Question

After Effects 2023 - Slow when ExtractoR is applied to EXR

  • November 11, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 2849 views

It seems to have always been an issue in AE using EXR files and how slow they are to play a sequence. But i noticed AE plays them much faster when ExtractoR is not applied. as soon as i add it, the animation becomes about 3 times slower. has anyone else experienced this? anyone have a solution? it baffels me because premiere is able to play them in realtime.

 

These EXR files aren't even layered EXR, they are seperated channels, it's not like it needs to load much data.

 

Thanks

2 replies

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Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 13, 2022

EXR workflow has significantly improved in the last couple of years. I expect it to improve a lot in the next few versions. EXR is becoming a more important and mainstream part of the production process. It will get better.

 

When I started using After Effects, everything had to render everything before you could see a preview,  I mean, completely render and then playback the render. A 10-second 720 X 480 comp could easily take a couple of hours to render. We have come a long way.

 

I'm perspective tracking a 4K, 10Bit shot in Mocha Pro right now, and the track is running at about 12fps. When I'm done with the track, I'll remove some things that spoil the shot, then I'll use the Mesh tracker to add a logo to a shirt, and it will look like part of the shirt, bending as the fabric moves and taking on the lighting changes. The shot also requires some Rotoscope to fix a part when the actor's hand moves in front of the shirt. I did something similar for a feature film about a two and a half years ago, and it took me about 250 hours to fix 12 shots with a total running time of just over 2 and a half minutes. The same project today, with the improved tools and rendering time, would probably take less than 40 hours. In spite of the crashes and the bugs, significant progress is being made. I"m more productive today than I was six months ago and way more productive than I was two years ago. You just have to learn how to work around the limitations and optimize your workflow.  

 

 

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lukep11364996Author
Participating Frequently
November 14, 2022

EXR has been becoming more mainstream for the last 10 years on these forums lol. It's an industry standard workflow that every other software can use without issues. After Effects is the only one that still struggles. I am not a dev by any standard, so I’m hoping someone could explain to me why exactly After Effects is incapable of reading EXR quickly? it’s about 1 frame every 3 seconds for a full HD shot with no effects on top, on a PC with a fast threadripper and 3090. I have done projects using EXR for years and I have seen no difference really in AEs performance.
Is Pro EXR by fnord really the best there is?

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    November 11, 2022

    This is just how Extractor works. It doesn't even relate to how much data there is, the problem is how it's accessed and the limitations within the AE APIs to do that.

     

    Mylenium

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    lukep11364996Author
    Participating Frequently
    November 11, 2022

    Thanks for the reply! So will it ever be fast in AE? I would like to know so i can adjust my workflow acordingly.

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