Great points.
Resolution: Oh...I shot myself in the foot on this one. Long story explained here (which is what the piece is all about): Breakfast Rewind on Vimeo I stupidly started with the full rez photoshop piece the client had returned to me, which I used as a template. So I'm working in 8K, and previewing at 1/4, even tried 1/8th.
I'm not doing the entire piece in AE, but as you suggest I am spitting the AE clip to Premiere for final composition (at 4K...finally)
Re expressions. None. I've just learned OF them and am eager to learn about them.
In retrospect, I suppose I should be thankful it worked at all.
It looks like you nailed it with the newbie-expectations. I was editing a small shadow/dark area on a red apple in the upper left of the image. It was my understanding that AE was smart enough to know that changes to that would not affect 36 of the other 40 layers (made up numbers, I didn't count) and would therefore do the Ram Preview faster, not having to start from scratch. BUT...when that little green "I"m ready" line disappears and it chugs frame by frame it feels like ground zero.
Is my understanding correct that AE is that smart and I simply have a time perception issue? I suppose I could time how long it takes to preview, then make changes to 10 layers and time that to see if it takes substantially longer.
Anyway. Thank you so much for your input.
Rendering more than a couple of seconds at 8K resolution is the best most high-end systems could hope for. Presumably you don't have 8K monitors - maybe not even 4K - so rendering in full res is simply useless. Your display card would be incapable of displaying that many pixels anyway.
Your attempts at previewing at 1/4 or 1/8 are far more realistic, 1920x1080 is feasible for short previews, and 960x540 is a very workable resolution.
Cinemas don't even display the resolutions you're working at. Don't get sucked into the mega-resolution hype. Most audiences are oblivious to the difference between HD and 4K. If your content is being viewed online, it will probably never been seen at higher resolution than 1920x1080. Unless you're displaying your final product on 8K TV screens for some reason, re-work your project at 4K (if you must) or 1920x1080.
And yes, changing one layer in an AE comp may very well require re-building the preview (green line) for the duration of that layer. After Effects has got much better over the years at cacheing and preserving rendered content, but it's wise to expect that anytime you edit a layer, that whole layer may have to re-render in your preview. That's why you should always approach AE projects in little chunks, and don't expect to ever see the whole project in one go until you do a real render.
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