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

[andy-mrio]

Hi,

exciting update!

Here's the result of the benchmark (export is a PSD sequence):

• Intel i9-9900k / 64gb ram / rtx3080 - 10gb vram / Windows 10 64bit
• Single frame : 12:20
• Multi-Frame : 7:04
• Mercury GPU

Also rendered with 17.7 (gpu) : 11:53

[defaultz61ftjqt3dbm]

AMD Ryzen 7 3800X - 8 cores/16 threads at 4.3ghz
32gb RAM at 3333mhz
1050ti 4gb
windows 10 64 bit

Single: 16:03
Multi: 10:16
Software only render, as the mercury CUDA crashed the render due to not enough VRAM

[jenkmeister]

There should be an update in today's AE Beta build (x24) that should reduce the likelihood of VRAM running out. That said, you may end up with a better result from software with your configuration as the benchmark project does push the GPU VRAM usage. 

[stormWield]

Hi guys,

Disappointing numbers here unfortunately. I hope they improve with later beta versions.

My specifications:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)

3,6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

72 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB

Results from the Benchamrk Project

Single Frame Render: 15:28

Multi Frame Render: 11:51

Results from one of my projects

Single Frame Render: 32:29

Multi Frame Render: 29:17

[jenkmeister]

We have an iMacPro in our testing lab, 10 Core with 32GB RAM. Your Single Frame Render time looks very similar to ours, but our Multi-frame is about 9:50. That may just be the result of the additional threads on our machine. Did you try in Software vs. GPU Mercury modes? 

As for your own project, take a look to see if there are effects that have a yellow warning icon showing in the effect control window? That may be slowing down the rendering at this time.

[stormWield]

Thanks Jenkmeister,

After switching to Metal, I got the following results, which seem negligable, especially from the multi frame point of view. Is that because of compatibility? I also ran activity monitor to see CPU and GPU usage - which I don't really understand, to be honest - and saw that the benchamark project seems to be using maximum CPU resources which is great! The GPU though is showing only up to 1.2% or so usage. Is my graphics card not compatible?

Results from the Benchmark Project

Single Frame Render: 14:56

Multi Frame Render: 11:37

Of course, any time saving is appreciated though. I just hoped to be getting around 1.7X speed benefit - based on the table above with my CPU cores and memory, I should be getting around that, no?

[jenkmeister]

The graphics card is supported, but there is only a limited amount of work being done on the GPU with the benchmark project (there are effects using the GPU, but in general they are fast to execute). Once we get through a few more pieces of work (primarily to dynamically optimize the rendering based on the hardware/composition complexity), hopefully perf will improve on your system. If not, we will definitely continue to work with you on what's going on so we can get the most out of the machine.

[stormWield]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep testing newly released beta versions.

[stormWield]

Latest tests on the benchmark project using AE Beta 18.1.0 (Build 31) are as follows:

Mercury (software only)

Single Frame Render: 15:05
Multi Frame Render: 11:49

Mercury GPU Acceleration (Metal)

Single Frame Render: 15:07
Multi Frame Render: 11:16

[alphaf13020820]

3970X 32C/ RTX3090/ W10 /64GB

Loseless AVI

Single : 12:56

Multi   : 04:10

[alphaf13020820]

There is much to improve espesically for 3d layers. Tried in a project with lot of 3d layers, no plugins, multiframe was slower than single. 

[jenkmeister]

Would you be able to share the 3D project with us at mfrbeta@adobe.com? 

[alphaf13020820]

Sure, I sent it.

[Brian_Fox]

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990x 64 core

256gbs Ram

Quadro RTX 5000 16gbs ram

Windows 10 64 bit

Single Frame: 12:21

Multi-Frame:  3:57

😍

[frank_d]

I have been waiting for this feature to come back for so long!

Here are my results:

CPU: i7-6950x

RAM: 64GB

GPU: Titan X (Pascal) 12 GB

OS: Win 10 64-bit

Single Frame: 18 min 45 sec

Multi-Frame: 9 min 16 sec

[scrozier]

I thought this day would never come. 

Would love to know more about how this differs from the old multiframe render (2014)

Here are  my Benchmarks:

AMD Threadripper 3960x 24 Core ~4ghz, | 128GB DDR4 RAM, | rtx2080ti 11GB | Windows 10 64 20H2

Single Frame Software to ProRes4444 - 12min 30s....painful so I didn't rerun with GPU. 

Multi Frame w/ Mercury to ProRes4444 - 4min, 11s (average # of cores / threads 8)

Mutli Frame Software to ProRes4444 - 4min, 21s

----
For comparison: 

RenderGarden w/ AE18.0 12 Seeds, 12 Threads Software (enabling GPU tends to crash due to lack of sufficent vram):  Last  thread 4min 12s then QT and h264 creation put it to 4min 43s total. 

[frank_d]

Forgot to mention that 

A) my GPU is a 10 core / 10 Threads chip

and

B) I exported as a QT animation, not sure if that matters at all.

[TeresaDemel]

Multi-Frame Rendering utilizes all of the cores in your CPU in parallel. "Render Multiple Frame Simultaneously" (or Multiprocessing) was a different technology which ran multiple instances of After Effects, duplicating memory and CPU usage to speed up some processes in After Effects. After Effects no longer uses multiprocessing.

[scrozier]

Tried this again today as multi-frame is almost ready to ship. 

Lowered Background CPU to 0%

MFR w/ GPU = 4min 11 seconds (this was my best of 3 runs , and the exact same as the initial beta) I will say the renders start a lot faster with the new proejct loading so that has improved the overal time and experience. 

MFR software only = 4min 16s (-5s) 5s better! So progress?

Notes: AE doesn't release whatever VRAM it has used from the previous render as far as I can tell from task manager. Even when opening another project VRAM usage is still really high. Can't tell if it is effecting performance or not but it would be nice for a way to release those resources. 

CPU usage was lower overall and less stressful on the CPU temp but same speed. Not sure if this means its just better code now or if there is a potential to squeeze out a few more seconds somewhere with the leftover overhead.  

[scrozier]

Here's the bad news....

I rendered one of my real world projects w/ Render Garden 12 seeds / 12 threads and It cranked out the comp in 5Min 33s using the stable release of AE. GPU On etc. 

Beta using MFR same settings It took over twice as long at at 11min 56 seconds. 

The project is a lot of shape layers, some 3d sections, sort of a typical vector animation job. No third party effects or really many effects of any kind except for fractal noise in one scene.

It feels like MFR really bogs down on any of the sections with a lot of 3D Layers. 

Hoping they can still work out some of the kinks in MFR on real world projects it still struggles to use the whole CPU for me Happy to share the project file to adobe if they think they can learn something from it! 

[jenkmeister]

If you're able to send us the comps, we'd love to look at them. Send them to mfrbeta@adobe.com. 

In terms of VRAM usage, it'll be swapped out as soon as space is needed. No performance impact as far as we are aware. 

thanks! 

[SnoopMikey]

Love this - total game changer!

Specs: Intel i9-10900K (10 cores) / 128 GB RAM / GeForce RTX 2060 8GB VRAM

Results:

- Single-Frame Render Speed: 11:33

- Multi-Frame Render Speed: 6:33

(both with w/ Mercury GPU Accelleration) 

[Nick2049]

TRS Mikey!!! Thanks for the memories.

[Aerospaced]

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core 3.80 GHz / 128 GB / RTX 2080 Ti 11GB (3x) / Win 10 (64) / 4TB SSD Scratch / 1TB M2 OS drive

• Mercury Software / Single Frame = 14:52, 3.7 GB cache used
• Mercury GPU (CUDA) / Single Frame = 18:04, 9.2 GB cache used
• Mercury Software / Multi Frame = 8:20, 59.4 GB cache used
• Mercury GPU (CUDA) / Multi Frame = 9:37, 5.4 GB cache used