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TeresaDemel
Adobe Employee
TeresaDemel
Adobe Employee
March 10, 2021
Question

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

  • March 10, 2021
  • 147 replies
  • 167166 views

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

    147 replies

    Show previous replies
    F
    Fizzrock
    Known Participant
    February 27, 2022

    Previewing a simple.MP4 file is MUCH SLOWER when using Multi-Frame Rendering, compared to simply turning the feature off.

     

    See my post here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/preview-on-v22-not-realtime-when-playing-rendered-footage/m-p/12780502#M194603

      Juan Barrilete
      Juan Barrilete
      Inspiring
      February 2, 2022

      I am also having performance problems previewing a project that go away when MFR is turned off. Specifically with MFR turned on, the timeline will appear to have rendered completely but during preview it hits a patch and starts slowing down. The FPS then goes way down - as you can see in the screenshot below, it's barely going 1 FPS. I've tried different things:

      - Emptying the media cache and DB
      - Trying all the different preview resolutions
      - Switching between CUDA, Software, and OpenCL

       

      My PC: Windows 10 / i7-8700 @3.20GHz (6 cores) / 32 GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (w/latest driver) / 2T NVMe

       

      IMHO, a failure mode where the timeline appears to have rendered successfully (according to the green line) and yet the preview fails to perform in realtime is something that Adobe should address right away. I will not enable MFR until Adobe at least fixes that.

       

      The bug does seem to be project specific, however. I don't see this issue with the Pulse app.

       

       

      J
      Community Manager
      jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
      Community Manager
      February 2, 2022

      Is this a project you are able to share with us so we can see if we can reproduce the frame rate issue you are seeing? 

      N
      ntimes9
      Known Participant
      April 15, 2022

      @jason_bartell is putting together a summary of our investigations and the things we are working on and will get that posted here sometime in the next few days. He is leading our investigations for these issues.

       

      The fix we talked about a few weeks ago was to show the cache state better but there does appear to be some memory issues we have identified that is causing additional purging to happen. 


      Hi again, another check in. @jenkmeister17177426, regarding your statement "The fix we talked about a few weeks ago was to show the cache state better" —— in the latest AE beta [Apr 13th] with MFR turned on the cache state still does not update.

       

      I know I've detailed this issue maybe a half dozen times here, but there still seems to be a belief on your end the cache mark update element of this issue has been fixed [when it has not], so I'll rewrite it out again clearly below:

       

      1. MFR is ON in latest AE Beta
      2. I load AE Pulse Project [or any complex project]
      3. I press spacebar and leave preview to render
      4. I don't touch anything and preview renders out [cache marks all green]
      5. I still don't touch anything and preview automatically plays through smoothly
      6. I click somewhere on the timeline to stop the preview and AE freezes up for a split second*
      7. I press play again and preview is jerky** [although cache marks are still all green]
      8. I open a different composition and then click back to the original composition and then the cache marks correctly update

       

      *this very brief freeze-up when I click the timeline is when the unseen frame purge occurs. This does not occur when I turn MFR OFF; there is no brief free-up when I click the the timeline, no unseen frame purge and the rendered preview will always play smoothly.

       

      **this is caused by AE having to re-render frames it has unecessarily purged [even though the cache markers all remain green]

       

      @jason_bartell hello sir, are you aware of this issue? As team leader I'd love to hear from you as frankly, and I say this with respect, it's becoming exhausting to keep coming to back to this without an inch of progress.

       

      Cheers people

      N
      ntimes9
      Known Participant
      February 2, 2022

      Hi there Adobe, I'm seeking assurance the issue of delayed/jerky preview playback a known one? MFR adds a delay [maybe a second] even when moving to an ALREADY rendered frame, and the playback itself  is also briefly delayed and only intermittenly smooth before degrading into jerkiness/freeze-up ... there's an almost random level of performance when replaying the exact same strip of already rendered ram preview. This is remedied by simply turning off MFR in preferences; the very same piece of pre-rendered timeline will play immediately with no delay, smoothly every single time.

       

      I've observed this issue in every complex project including your AE Pulse project. Can you tell me have you observed this? Is the only solution to turn off MFR or are you working on a cure?

       

      My PC: i7 8086K / GTX 1080 ti / 64GB DDR4 RAM / NVME SSD assets drive

       

      Hopefully you can guide me to a smoother animating experience

       

      Thanks so much for reading,

       

      Kiron

      W
      wei22856588x6qx
      New Participant
      January 27, 2022

       

      macbook pro m1pro 16gb

      ae beta v22.3.0

      C
      chfilm
      Inspiring
      January 31, 2022

      I today ran for the first time into a major problem with the Beta on my m1max mbp, when someone handed me over an existing project and it just absolutely wouldnt render through. It was playing back super smoothly at 1/3 resolution while editing, but I was unable to render.. 

       

      it took a while to find the culprit- turned out it was an add grain effect in some precomp. Just wanted to let you know, that this effect seems to cause major problems still on the m1 chip.. 

      JohnColombo17100380
      Community Manager
      JohnColombo17100380Community Manager
      Community Manager
      February 1, 2022

      Hi @chfilm,

      Thank you for reporting this issue. In testing the Add Grain effect on M1, we were not able to see any issues in either playback or rendering through the Render Queue. To help us investigate further, could you provide a bit information on the problems you are seeing:

      • What does the failure of Add Grain look like e.g. does After Effects (Beta) crash, is an error shown, or some other behavior? 
      • What is the resolution of the composition where the failing Add Grain effect is being used?
      • If you set the playback of the Composition panel to Full, do you see the same problem?

       

      A screen recording of the issue or the collect project with assets would be extremely helpful as well if you are able to share them.

       

      Thank you for reporting and for any further information,

      - John, After Effects Engineering Team

      iestynx
      iestynx
      Inspiring
      January 6, 2022

      I'm having a hell of a time with After Effects saying that it's out of memory when rendering. Been trying the Beta and 2022  can someone look at this log file and give me some help please🙏

      iestynx
      iestynx
      Inspiring
      January 6, 2022

      Tried importing the project into a new one at 8bpc and it works fine. But once I change to 16bpc, my Working space to 709 and linearised, it beach balls.

      iestynx
      iestynx
      Inspiring
      January 6, 2022

      OK, I've now Created a new project 16bpc, 709 linear. Imported the footage, redone the comps from sgratch and it all works fine. Renders super quick. How do I repair an After Effects file? As it seems like there's an issue with my working project.🤦‍♂

      nikki2008333
      nikki2008333
      New Participant
      December 8, 2021

      Not sure what's wrong, need help. I cannot get though a single render with any settings, keeps running out of memory.

      My PC specs: 

      nvidia 3080 rtx - 10 gb vram

      cpu intel 19-9900

      32 gb ram

      windows 10 64 bit

      I have tried Mercury only, GPU accelerated, single and multi-frame. nothing gets past halfway before it runs out of memory. Others here have rendered on lesser specs, i dont understand...

      J
      Community Manager
      Joy RaisinghaniCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      January 6, 2022

      Hello.

      Thanks for reporting this issue. We are currently working on making some memory related improvements that will resolve several memory issues. 

      Please stay tuned.

      Thanks,

      After Effects QE.

      iestynx
      iestynx
      Inspiring
      January 21, 2022

      Any estimate on this fix. It's affecting AE 2021, 2022 and the Beta version for me.

      zzyzxerxes
      zzyzxerxes
      New Participant
      November 29, 2021

      Will not render multi-proc with latest sapphire. Will crash system. 2x 3090, threadripper 3970x 32 core, 256 Gb ram. gpu sapphire disabled. Historically, the multi proc render has been pretty unstable and generally useless. Thanks for keeping with the traditions! At least I can disable "crashnow" 

       

      oof

       

      jjjj

       

       

      B
      BEHROZ5C14
      New Participant
      November 2, 2021

      Thanks for the update. I tested this new update with my work project, MFR makes render queue renders a lot faster but somehow it makes my preview slower. 

      When MFR is disabled, the section I preview runs in realtime 24fps on third resolution but when MFR is enabled I can't get it to go past 18fps no matter how low I set the preview resolution!

       

      My rig is kinda ancient by I'm not sure if the rig is the problem here 

      i7 4790 / 16 GB DDR3 1600 CL9 / RX580 

      I tried switching to mercury software only and OpenCL but it makes no differnce. I tried changing the MFR percentage to either higher than default 10% or even 0, but the problem presists 

       

      I'm on the latest build of Win11 

       

      Please HELP 

        hellopaul4
        hellopaul4
        Inspiring
        November 2, 2021

        I've found similar issues, on a reasonably high end 6-month old AMD 5950X/GTX3090/128GB RAM system, so it's probably not your "kinda ancient" rig's fault. Do you find if you quit/restart AE, the previews run perfectly for a while, then everything begins to slow down? I deleted my prefs, and things seem to be OK - for now at least, so maybe you could try that for a start?

        B
        Bit5DD6
        New Participant
        November 2, 2021

        Hi thanks for your reply. I even deleted all of my preferences, all third party plugins and re-installed AE and tried restarting the program and my rig several times, the problem presists, maybe once or twice it was blistering fast after purging cache and memory but after a pause/playback it went back to being slower than single frame rendering.

         

          Krashin
          Krashin
          Inspiring
          November 1, 2021

          Results:

          CUDA ON: MFR OFF // 11:36
          CUDA ON: MFR ON // 3:06

          That's a 3.74x increase in performance and it's very noticible

           

          AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX 32-Cores 3.50 GHz
          256 GB DDR4 RAM


          GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
          Driver version: 30.0.14.7111
          Driver date: 6/21/2021
          DirectX version: 12 (FL 12.1)
          Dedicated GPU memory 13.2/24.0 GB
          Shared GPU memory 2/128 GB
          GPU Memory 15/152 GB


          GPU 2: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
          Driver version: 30.0.14.7111
          Driver date: 6/21/2021
          DirectX version: 12 (FL 12.1)
          Dedicated GPU memory 13.7/24.0 GB
          Shared GPU memory 2/128 GB
          GPU Memory 15/152 GB

          sangbuidesigner
          sangbuidesigner
          New Participant
          October 27, 2021

          Hi,

          I benchmark with Ryzen 3900X | 64GB Ram | RTX 3090 SuprimX | Windows 10 64 bit

          • Single frame: 7:06 
          • Multi Frame: 6:50
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