Skip to main content
.Ava.
Known Participant
June 14, 2023
Question

Extremely slow render with multiple adjustment layers

  • June 14, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1267 views

This is a repost, because there were some fundamental typos in my first post, and for some strange reason, there's no way to edit.

 

I am making a basic 1080p video of me, talking, in my bedroom. I have many colorful lights in the background, and have probably around 50 adjustment layers in total, and I've masked to each light I want to alter. Things like the color change, lumetri color, hue/saturation, etc them.

 

It is taking literally 3 DAYS to render a 7 minute video. And it's definitely the adjustment layers, because when I delete them, it renders quickly.

 

Are there ways to either speed up the render time, or are there alternatives to achieving what I want to achieve?

 

So, for example, I have various lights and lanterns in my background, and I have an adjustment layer for every one of them. I wish to be able to alter their brightness/hue/saturation, etc.

 

Just for reference, it is a static video. The camera doesn't move during the entire video, since it's just a conversational vlog.

 

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Community Expert
June 15, 2023

It is impossible to say what is causing the slowdown without seeing the layers and their modified properties. It make take several screenshots. Multiple Adjustment layers is a bit of a red flag. Most of the time it is more efficient to just put an effect like Lumetri in one layer and if you only want the effect to affect a part of a layer, you can use a mask and enable compositing options. 

 

Fifty applications of Lumetri in a single comp is going to slow things way down no matter what you try to do. If you need different colors for lights you might consider a shape layer with multiple different sized filled shapes that are different colors, maybe some blur, and then blend modes. That would render much faster than fifty masked adjustment layers with one or more color correction effect applied. 

 

If you can't find a more efficient workflow you may just be stuck with the render time. I suggest you break your comp up into several shorter comps, each 30 seconds or less, then, after all the pieces are rendered, drop them into Premiere Pro and render your final video there. Asking After Effects to spend 3 days on a render intensive project without running out of memory or hanging up is a lot like handing a loaded gun to a three year old. Something bad is bound to happen. Mose of my comps are single shots and most shots in my movies are less than 7-seconds long. I render almost all comps, and any project that takes more than a couple of seconds a frame to render are always rendered as Image Sequences so that I can pick up where the render fails or just fix 10 frames that the client doesn't like instead of re-rendering 200 of them.

 

I don't know if I helped you at all, but if you only follow the advice of rendering a few seconds at a time, you will have a lot higher chance of completing the project.

.Ava.
.Ava.Author
Known Participant
June 24, 2023

Thank you so much. I have been a lurker in these forums for years and I see you helping people constantly.

 

Much appreciated.