Multi-Frame Rendering is here! (AKA The multithreading you’ve been asking for)

[TeresaDemel]

Multi-frame Rendering is here for After Effects beta users. Right now, you will have access to Multi-Frame Rendering for export only. Keep your eye on this forum, as we will be rolling out new features until we launch.

Internally, we have been testing a representative sample of projects with a suite of hardware configurations, and we are excited to finally put this feature in your hands and get your feedback. Test your unique projects on your own hardware so we can ensure that our performance updates benefit all of our customers and meet speed and quality metrics before we launch.

Beta testing of Multi-Frame Rendering will last a little longer than some of our other features because we currently do not support Multi-Frame Rendering in Preview, Motion Graphics templates, Dynamic Link, Adobe Media Encoder and AERender Command Line Interface.

Check out the blog and FAQ post to learn the following:

• What is Multi-Frame Rendering?
• What factors influence performance?
• Which effects have been optimized for Multi-Frame Rendering?

Start Testing!
We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts and ideas in this forum.

• How much faster is Multi-Frame Rendering compared to Single-Frame Rendering with your comps on your machine?
• Does our benchmark project perform at the expected speed on your system?
• If you run into specific speed or quality issues with your project, share your project with us at mfrbeta@adobe.com.

Test Your Comps
Test your comps in Multi-Frame Render mode vs. Single-Frame Render

• Use Ae Render Queue to export your comp in Multi-Frame mode.
• Purge both the disk and memory cache, then
• Use Ae Render Queue to export your project in Single-Frame mode. Note: Use the same output module for Single-Frame and Multi-Frame mode. Go to Preferences -> Memory and Performance -> Enable Multi-Frame Rendering (beta) and uncheck the box to use Single-Frame Rendering Mode

Leave a comment and the following information in this forum:

• Your hardware specs: # cores in your CPU, GB of memory, GPU model and amount of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed (Use “Render Time” noted in your status bar)
• Multi-Frame render speed

If you detect any problems with render speed or quality, submit your projects

• Open your After Effects project
• File -> Dependencies -> Collect Files -> Collect -> Save As (Name Your Folder)
• After Effects will store your .aep file, footage, and text report (file log)
• Zip up your project and send it to us at mfrbeta@adobe.com (or send a link to it hosted on your creative cloud storage if it’s too large to email).

Share the following information in your comment:

• Your hardware specs: # cores in your CPU, GB of memory, GPU model and amount of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed (Use “Render Time” noted in your status bar)
• Multi-Frame render speed
• Mercury CPU or GPU Mode used

Test our benchmark project and see how your hardware compares
We would love to know how your hardware compares to the results we have gathered from our test suite:

To test the benchmark project on your machine:

• Download the benchmark project. 
• Use Ae Render Queue to export the benchmark project in Multi-Frame mode.
• Purge both the disk and memory cache, then
• Go to Preferences -> Memory and Performance -> Enable Multi-Frame Rendering (beta) and uncheck the box to use Single-Frame Rendering Mode
• Use Ae Render Queue to export the benchmark project in Single-Frame mode. Note: Use the same output module for Single-Frame and Multi-Frame mode.

Share the following information in this forum:

• Your hardware specs: # cores in your CPU, GB of memory, GPU model and amount of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed
• Multi-Frame render speed

[chfilm]

+1!

[berniefx]

YES, if this get's implemented in the timeline preview speed, this would be a gamechanger!

[Marcio Sato]

• Intel i9-9900k / 64gb ram / rtx3060ti - 8gb vram / Windows 10 64bit
• Single frame : 14:40
• Multi-Frame : 10:40

GPU Makes difference ? oO

[frank_d]

That's odd, you have a more recent CPU and chipset, and it appears your multi-frame time is slightly longer than mine.

Maybe there's a bottleneck somewhere that's a factor? I/O perhaps?

[Marcio Sato]

I do not know, because my project and rendered files are on an nvme ssd Corsair P1 - 1TB Read: 2000 MB/s Write: 1700 MB/s.

All files rendered in quicktime ProRes HQ.

I made a second test, disable google drive/synology drive/dropbox.
Intel i9-9900k / 64gb ram / rtx3060ti - 8gb vram / Windows 10 64bit / NVME SSD
Multi-Frame : 10:12

I did the test in my second machine
Ryzen 3600 / 64gb ram / Quadro P400 2gb vram / Windows 10 64bit / NVME SSD
Single frame : 18:08
Multi-Frame : 12:32

[frank_d]

It could just be some sort of inconsistency of the test itself, besides the difference is about 1 minute.

[Guest]

Definitly not an high end 2021 computer on my side (it's 7 years old)

• Intel i7-4770 3.40Ghz / 4 cores - 8 threads / 16gb ram / rtx2060 super - 8gb vram / Windows 10 64bit 20H2
• Single frame : 51:30
• Multi-Frame : 28:11

I'm getting a 2x faster render, it's great ! Now, if the list of compatible effects gets more populated before release (like keying effect for example) and if we get at least this boost at playback, the multithread update will be a real game changer I guess.

[Rajo]

The performance boost is good, but what really surprises me is seeing in the comments how pointless the insane GPUs are - my 10850k with a measly AMD RX580 8 GB scores 13:12 (singleframe) and 7:25 (multiframe).

[オアフ]

• Ryzen 3950x / 96GB Memory / 1080ti / Windows 10 Pro 
• Single : 13:12
• multi : 6:00

My Result is Great.

And I want this feature in the preview.

I hope it will be implemented.

[andydv]

Intel Xeon W-2145 [8-core / 16 thread] / 256GB RAM / Titan RTX / Windows 10 Pro

Single Frame: 18 Min 4 Sec

MultiFrame: 11 Min 24sec

Prores 4444 output.

CPU is turbo boosted from 3.7 base speed to 4.29GHz. Still quite sluggish...I've cursed my choice of CPU...feel like it's been a consistent bottleneck for an otherwise ripping PC build. 

[Magnus Allgurén]

Wow, this worked really well with my 9 year old workhorse! 

Specs: Intel i7-3930K 3.2GHz (6 cores) / 64 GB DDR3-1600 RAM / GeForce RTX 2080ti 11GB VRAM

Results:

- Single-Frame Render Speed: 29:30

- Multi-Frame Render Speed: 15:55

[jenkmeister]

It's wonderful to see all of your results from the benchmark project. Thank you for posting them.

Just to answer a few of the questions/requests:

• Will MFR work with Preview: Yes, we are currently working on it and will release it into Beta in the next few months. 
• Will MFR work with Media Encoder/Dynamic Link: It's on our roadmap to be completed before we ship MFR to all customers. 
• Will MFR work with AERender: Yes, it does now. But early feedback has indicated we need to add some additional parameters to provide a bit more control over MFR with AE Render, so we have that on our roadmap as well.
• Will MFR work with Premiere Pro Motion Graphic Templates (AE created ones): This is also on our roadmap. 
• Will all AE effects support MFR: That's the goal. So far about 200 of the effects have been updated to support MFR. The remaining 90 or so are on the roadmap to be completed before we ship MFR to all customers. 
• What about third-party effects? It's up to each developer if they support MFR, but the vast majority of active developers are already working on supporting MFR, and we are working closely with the more popular effect developers to assist as needed.

Keep those results coming in, and please keep testing your own projects. If you find a project that breaks MFR or is much slower than expected, please let us know here or email the project to mfrbeta@adobe.com so we can fix it!

[thejohnnyluu]

Mac Pro (2019)

3.3 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon W, 160 GB 2933 MHz DDR4, AMD Radeon Pro W5700X 16 GB

Single-Frame - 14 Min, 13 sec

Multi-Frame - 7 Min, 4 sec

The difference is actually shocking.

I really hope this gets fully implemented for Ram Preview and Timeline Scrubbing soon!

Incidentally here are my results using Mekajiki RenderGarden

8 seeds, 8 Gardeners - 10 Min, 10 sec

10 seeds, 10 Gardeners - 9 Min, 24 sec

[Szalam]

I was really curious about how it would compare with RenderGarden. Thanks for sharing!

[thejohnnyluu]

Just for fun, here are the results from my older machine:

Mac Pro (Early 2009) firmware upgraded from 4,1 to 5,1

macOS Mojave 10.14.6

2 x 3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

28 GB 1066 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2 GB

Single-Frame - 25 Min, 52 sec

Multi-Frame - 12 Min, 37 sec

[thejohnnyluu]

I hadn't realised that my project settings for my Mac Pro 2019 results were Murcury - Software so I ran the benchmark agian and got the following results.

Mercury - GPU METAL, Single-Frame - 13 Min, 42 Sec

Mercury - GPU METAL, Multi-Frame - 6 Min, 40 Sec

So slightly faster with GPU acelleration turned on.

[isotropy]

Hey there! Just wanted to share my results. I'm kinda surprised i'm not seeing much of a speed increase with MF enabled:

Multi - Mercury Metal: 13:03
Single - Mercury Metal: 14:33

Specs are OSX 10.14.6 4Ghz 9900KS Core i9, 64GB RAM, Vega 64 8GB Hackintosh. Drives are all SSD's with a Seperate M.2 for disk cache.

Is there anything I can test on my end to figure out why my speeds aren't seeing the kinds of increases others are?

[jenkmeister]

By "Hackintosh" do you mean a self-built Mac? We've seen some reports of these self-built machines not performing as well as we expect. You could try switching the benchmark project to Mercury Software and running the MFR run again. You could also enable your AE log file (Help -> Enable Log File), run the MFR export, then Reveal the AE Log file (Help -> Review Log File. Look for the After Effects log.txt file) and send that to us at mfrbeta@adobe.com. That might have some more clues if we are failing for some reason. 

[isotropy]

Correct. It's a hackintosh built with PC components running OSX. I ran the test with logging, so i'll email and we can troubleshoot there! Thanks 😄

[isotropy]

Just a quick update - will email too - Mercury Software was 12:44, so a small speed increase there over running Metal.

[pier-adam]

Hardware specs: macOS Big Sur 11.2.3
2.3 GHz 18-Core Intel Xeon W,
128 GB 2666 MHz DDR4,
Radeon Pro Vega 64, 16 GB
Single-Frame render speed : 13:22
Multi-Frame render speed : 6:01
(Mercury GPU )
When using metal it was using only half my cpu's. ??? may be not optimized yet 
MF render speed 10:37

[jenkmeister]

When using Mercury Software mode, right now MFR is limited to using about half the CPU cores for the concurrent frames (up to 8 cores), and then individual effects may use other cores for their processing. For Mercury GPU mode, we look at the comp resolution and available VRAM and potentially scale back the number of concurrent frames to avoid thrashing the GPU VRAM contents. But for your config, I would expect it to still be at 8 concurrent frames. Seeing half of the CPUs being used may mean the GPU is being utilized more. 

That all said, yes not everything is optimized yet. We are currently working on watching the system resource usage during a composition and adjusting the number of concurrent frames, GPU usage, RAM usage, etc., to attempt to get the most of the machine we possibly can. Expect those changes to go into beta over the coming weeks and we'll update everyone as that happens. 

[pier-adam]

Thank you for the explanation! I'm just happy that it work on MAC to tell you the thruth.  😛 for the first time ever I think I heard my fans on my IMAC Pro kicking in when the MFR started.

[Mr.Journey]

Thank you thank you thank you! We at Buck would be dancing in the streets were it not for the pandemic.

• Ryzen 9 3900x 12-core @ 4Ghz w/40GB RAM
• Nvidia GTX 1080 w/8GB VRAM

Using AEPulseBenchmark.aep:

• Single-Frame render speed: 16m 44s
  
• Multi-Frame render speed: 9m 13s
  

[jesperfrydenlund]

This is amazing.
Great improvements to render times already.

However, if you are rebooting the Render Queue for 2021 you NEED to abandon Animation as the default rendering-codec.

No modern OS supports is. So it puzzles me why it lingers in AE...

Thanks,

Jesper