I will pay someone $400 if they can write a faster alternative to EXractoR

[lukep11364996]

ProEXR by fnord has been shipped with AE for many years and it has gotten no better at reading EXR files in that time in my opinion. Premiere Pro, Nuke and Resolve can read EXR in realtime. I want the same for AE. I want near the same performance that you get when AE reads PNG or TIFF files.

An EXR workflow is an industry standard, yet AE still lacks behind. I have requested an update from for years but only get excuses that it’s my workflow that is the issue and I should find workarounds. I have been using AE for over 10 years, I think AE is completely capable of reading these files faster than ProEXR is doing.

So, I challenge someone, somewhere, please write a faster alternative. I’m not a rich man, but I am willing to pay this if someone is willing to do it.

[JohnColombo]

Hi @lukep11364996,

Thanks for making this request. Tagging @fnordware to address the performance feedback.

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[fnordware]

Any speed issues are not with EXtractoR itself, but the process of reading the EXR files in the OpenEXR plug-in and handing the buffers to EXtractoR. This process takes longer for multi-channel EXR files, even if you're not grabbing the extra channels with EXtractoR.

I also wrote the Premiere EXR plug-in, so it's pretty much the same, runs at the same speed. One thing Premiere has going for it is a different architecture that loads files in the background, making it feel smoother.

Over the years I've added various caching mechanisms to speed up EXR access in AE. If you have some EXR files that you feel are reading more slowly than they should, please post them and we can investigate.