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

Hello All!

A round of updates for everyone using MFR.

• Today's beta release version will switch to Version 22.1. Yes, this means we are in the process of wrapping up 22.0 and preparing that for future public release. So you know, if you have any other bugs you might be sitting on that are to do with MFR, please let us know because fixing those now might be important. 😉

• As of 22.1x1, every effect shipped with AE except 1 (so 289 of 290!), now supports Multi-Frame Rendering. Particle Playground is just about done and should be in an upcoming beta build. Since the last update, Reshape, Smear, Rolling Shutter Repair, Foam, Rotobrush and Paint have been updated to support MFR. Note: there is a known crash in Rotobrush we are currently fixing, that fix should also be in an upcoming build.

• In 22.1x1, there is also an update to the Cinema 4D/Cineware plugins. A little bit better performance with MFR and more stability fixes. We really need some more testing and feedback on this update, so if you have anything that utilizes C4D in your AE workflows, please let us know how it works for you.

• Speculative Preview / Cache Frames When Idle change: We made a change that will stop speculative preview occuring while the focus is on the layer or footage panels. In the vast majority of cases if you're rotobrushing or painting or picking footage to drop into a comp, you really don't want speculative preview starting up. So for now, we've just turned it off while you're focused on those panels. As soon as you click back to the timeline window or just about any other panel, it'll re-enable (assuming you have it toggled on to begin with) and get back to caching again.

• MFR Preview startup time: We continue to look at ways to optimize the time to the first frame showing up during a preview. We've taken more steps toward this in this build. Please let us know if it's noticeable in making MFR previews feel faster for you.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Thanks

Sean

Got a new PC for video rendering a while ago and just did a test run with the benchmark project on the latest beta

• Hardware specs: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X - 16 cores CPU, 128GB GB of memory, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU  with 16GB of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed = 10 Min, 1 Sec (Mercury Software Only)
• Multi-Frame render speed = 3 Min, 52 Sec (Mercury Software Only)
• Multi-Frame render speed = 3 Min, 40 Sec (Mercury GPU Acceleration (OpenCL)

Great job!! Can't wait to use this in production 🙂

MFR Preview, C4D, More Effects and a Live Show!

Starting with build 22.0x98, the delay in starting up Multi-Frame Rendering Preview should be greatly improved. This change includes a significant update to the way projects are managed during a render so please be on the look out for unexpected error messages and let us know how this works for you.

A few things to be aware of with this improved start up time:

•  Projects that contain audio tracks or audio effects may still have a delay in starting preview. We are actively investigating this.
•  There is a bug in x98 (and x99) that can cause the Preview to take longer to stop playing back. This will be fixed in the next build.

In addition to this fix, we've integrated an update to Cinema 4D that includes support for Multi-Frame Rendering. This is hot-off-the-presses, so you may find some instability. More details and a place to discuss what's working and not working can be found here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/cineware-and-cinema-4d-comp-renderer-update/td-p/12386823

We also continue to update the remaining effects to support MFR. Through build x99 you should find Fractal, VR Converter, VR Plane to Sphere, VR Sphere to Plane, Cineware, Liquify, Shatter, Cineon Converter, Warp Stabilizer, Remove Grain, 3D Camera Tracker, Pixel Motion Blur, Timewarp, Refine Hard Matte, Refine Soft Matte and VR Denoise are now MFR enabled. We expect all included effects to have MFR support by early next week!

One other bug you should know about - Speculative Preview and the Layer Panel (with paint or rotobrushing) can lead to some application hangs. We are working on fixes for this and should have an update in builds later this week or early next week. 

If you want to learn more about any of this, please tune in to the School of Motion show on Friday September 17th at 9am (Pacific) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aVgvDlYvNQ&ab_channel=SchoolofMotion - a few of us from the team will be hanging out and discussing MFR and all it's features! We'd love to see you there.

Here are my results:

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - 12 cores/24 threads 

Nvidia RTX 3070 - 8 gb ram

64 GB RAM / 3600MHZ/

1 TB nvme drive

ProRes 422 Render

Single Core/Software only/: 2:28

Multi Core/Software only/: 4:50 (40gb cache)

Single Core/Cuda/: 10:16

Multi Core/Cuda/: 4:20 (5,6 gb cache)

This is with the latest beta builds. I haven't tryed rendering just straight avi files, as they are bit faster. But generally I render 422 quicktimes. I hope the upcoming code refactor will fix these issues. Looking forward to this update. Keep up the good work. 

Incredible work - really loving seeing how quickly these improvements are rolling out.

Any update on the lag when starting previews? MFR remains switched off for me due to the lag 😢

please add "refine soft matte" and "refine hard matte" to the supported MFR effects. these are cruicial for many Roto/key tasks in After effects. thanks

Hello Beta Users...

It's been a few weeks since we last posted, but with today's build we have some specific features and changes we want to make sure you know about. So here we go: 

• Starting with build 22.0x81, there is a new optimization that should give a bit more rendering performance on all machine configurations. We've seen the best improvements on machines with 6-12 cores (30-45 seconds faster to render the Benchmark project), but higher end machines will also see some improvement.

• Now that MFR can effectively use all your CPU cores and saturate your machine, we know there may be times you want AE to use less than 100% of your computer so you can still get other work done while rendering. With today's build, you can now request AE to use less of your machine. Yep, after 2+ years of trying to make AE use all of your system, the irony of an option to slow AE down isn't lost on us. Anyway... "Preferences -> Memory & Performance -> % CPU reserved for other applications" can be adjusted between 0% to 70% to do just that. By default, this preference is set to 10% meaning AE will try to remain under 90% of system CPU usage. If you're attempting to benchmark MFR, please set that to 0% to allow AE to use all of your system. Please note that this is really a soft request to AE and not a hard limit - to render any particular frame, AE may need to go into that reserved CPU % for some period of time.
  
  
• aerender has a new flag, -mfr, that allows you to turn MFR on and off, and to pass in a maximum CPU % usage to use. This is essentially the reserved CPU % but flipped so you set the requested maximum CPU % usage. This follows the pattern in aerender with maximum memory to use. (Note: aerender for MacOS is almost back to working. There are still a few more things to fix but it should be working for all supported MacOS's next week). 
  
  
• More effects are now supported by MFR including Sharpen, Corner Pin, Displacement Map, Turbulent Displace, Warp, Grid, Keylight, Simple Choker, Add Grain, 3D Glasses, Motion Tile, HDR Commander, VR Blur, VR Glow, VR Fractal Noise, VR Rotate Sphere, VR Chromatic Aberrations, VR Sharpen, VR Digital Glitch, VR Color Gradients, Color Balance, Invert, Color Stabilizer, Lumetri, Color Range, Lens Flare, Lightning, Camera Shake Deblur, Scribble, Extract, Color Profiler Converter, HDR Highlight Compression, Hue/Saturation, Mesh Warp, Vegas, Basic Text, Path Text, Numbers, Colorama, Radio Waves, Card Dance, Caustics, Wave World and Card Wipe. 25 or so more to go and everything bundled with AE will support MFR.

That’s a lot to digest, so please let us know if you have any questions or run into any issues. 

More updates soon!

Thanks

Sean

Loving the beta and the results from MF rendering!

I couldn't see this on the thread and know it's a bit cheeky to ask, but you never know. Would we have a rough ball-park 'gestimation' when MF will be ready in the main AE build? 

Thanks so much in advance! Appreciate all the hard work that is going into making this happen, been waiting for years for this and so excited to see it come to life. 

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970x 32 core

128 GB RAM

2x ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3090 24G OC (24 GB VRAM)

Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit (Build 19043)

PSD-Sequence
Single Frame: 2:10 

Multi-Frame:  3:20