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rodb36449791
Inspiring
January 14, 2018
Answered

After effects project extremely slow...computer issue or project to complex???

  • January 14, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 6513 views

Hi guys,

Could use some feedback.

I am working on a project and was provided a template by a client.

This one:

https://videohive.net/item/cinematic-slideshow/17109496

I'm having a hell of a time previewing the project, which is seriously slowing down my progress. That's my main concern...I need these previews to come out faster so I can work faster.

I just stuck 32GB of RAM in the computer and it didn't make a difference.

I'm even rendering previews at quarter resolution.

Any suggestions or insight would be great!

Drive is a fusion drive 2TB.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Roland Kahlenberg

    Image size is also a contributing factor. Setting your Composition Panel's resolution to auto and running 25% or 50% previews is going to help. You have a boatload of layers in a 9-second comp and a lot of them are nested comps so I'm assuming that there are a lot of things going on. The project may be a lot more complicated than it needs to be, or it could just be one of those templates that take forever to render.  If the latter is true just try and make sure that all of your images are at or near 100% scale at some point in the project. This will really help with render times.


    When working with complex projects,look at reducing preview and render times by pre-rendering nested compositions.

    As a general rule of thumb, ensure that a final render is no more than 12 hours. This allows you to start a render at night and have it ready the next morning. Anything longer and you'll be unproductive in the morning as your system will be tied up rendering.

    Do not scale down any Comps or layers as this may affect the design!!! You should pre-render each Comp at the size they have been set up.

    2 replies

    R
    rodb36449791Author
    Inspiring
    January 15, 2018

    Here are some the effects used:

    Fast blur

    Hue/Saturation

    Curves

    Levels

    Glow

    Fast Blur (Legacy) (on maybe 20 layers)

    Sharpen

    Unsharp Mask

    Vibrance

    Noise

    Tritone

    Camera Lens Blur

    Optics compensation

    Transform

    Tint

    Black and White

    Most of these effects show up in multiple compositions and on many different layers

    Then there is a control panel with adjustments (Picture below)

    P.M.B
    P.M.B
    Legend
    January 15, 2018

    Hi,

    Those are mostly expression sliders.  So it looks like you're working with very complicated template with tons of expressions & all sorts of who knows what going on.

    There really is no way efficient way for anyone to trouble shoot without the actual template.

    And there may not be anything "wrong" per se.

    It could be that you i5 processor is struggling.

    That's not to say that an i7 or the beastliest of CPUs wouldn't ALSO be struggling.

    There's really no way to tell with so much going on "under the hood" in the template.

    Your best bet is to follow the suggestions I already gave of turning off layers and effects that

    you do not need to preview & trimming layers.

    I think this is just one of the "Cons" of working with these fancy templates.

    They can be very system intensive and very, very difficult to troubleshoot since alot of what is happening is hidden or otherwise

    unknown to the end user.

    ~Gutterfish
      R
      Community Expert
      Rick GerardCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      January 16, 2018

      Image size is also a contributing factor. Setting your Composition Panel's resolution to auto and running 25% or 50% previews is going to help. You have a boatload of layers in a 9-second comp and a lot of them are nested comps so I'm assuming that there are a lot of things going on. The project may be a lot more complicated than it needs to be, or it could just be one of those templates that take forever to render.  If the latter is true just try and make sure that all of your images are at or near 100% scale at some point in the project. This will really help with render times.

        P.M.B
        P.M.B
        Legend
        January 15, 2018

        Really can't tell much from that screen shot.  What in all those comps?  What effects are being used?  How big are the images?

        All that information aside...something that used to slow me down was having everything the entire length of my project.

        Trim the in points and outpoints of all you layers and compositions only to where they're needed so after effects is not evaluating every layer of every comp for the entire length of the project.

        So that's a step that applies universally.

        Also only preview what you need to.  For example lets say you do some heavy color corrections.  You can test the correction on a single frame, get it how you want it then turn that effect or effects off until you're ready to render. 

        Apart from that there's really no way to tell what you have going on in the project in terms of effects and assets.

        ~Gutterfish
        R
        rodb36449791Author
        Inspiring
        January 15, 2018

        Hi Paul,

        Thanks so much for the response.

        Here are pictures of the comps

        Assets are a few images and videos (1920 x 1080) max resolution. 3 images and 3 videos so far.

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