The video tutorial leave out a lot of other thing to take into consideration, when it comes to faster (preview) rendering.
Here are some of the points:
- Lowering resolution will only work for preview renderings. If not changed manually, AE will always take the best quality for the final export. This can dramatically increase rendering times, as well as bring the computer to a stopp, because it ran out of ressources. It's highly adviceable to spot check the work in full resolution before the final render.
- Lowering resolution will only work this way, if the preview resolution in the preview panel is set to "(auto)".
- Lowering resolution has a drastically effect on the visuals. Not only the image gets pixellated, also effects are rendering different. Artefacts can occur quickly, driving beginners crazy because they don't know where those came from (thanks to videos like this).
- Working with a lower resolution is only adviceable when designing timing, never it should be used when designing imagery and effects.
- Next to lowering resolution, the preview panel offers the option to skip frames. Skipping frames effectivly cuts down the preview rendering time. Skipping 1 or 2 frames is fair enough to still work on timing roughly, skipping more then 2 should rather be used for very rough timing or imagery.
- Working with precomps is adviceable instead of putting all layers into one comp. It's easier for AE to handle a lot of precomps and a lot of hierachy levels, then handling a lot of layers at once. Also, it helps to keep all layers in sight. The more you see, the less mistakes you do and the more you can trust on your workflow, the less you need to check with previewing.
- Heavy expressions, which are not necassary for the visual outcome, can always be deactivated with a checkbox. AE is not going to calculate the expression, when it is switched off this way. The code is basically:
check = // pickwhip checkbox here
if (check == 0){
// expression goes here
} else {
value;};
This can be used to deactivate several expressions at once, effectivly creating an "edit mode" with fewer effects and faster preview rendering times. This can be expanded to layers opacity and effects opacity, too.
- When working with AI layers, deactivation continuous rasterization if helpful to speed up preview rendering times. Of course the artwork isn't that crisp anymore, might even gets heavily pixellated. Therefore, CR has to switch on again before final rendering. While creating the animation, arraging elements, timing you can often work with pixellated graphics. There are scripts available for sure, which let you switch CR on and off with one click.
- Hardware is also to take into consideration. AE runs best on a fast CPU. Intel is generally more adviceable than AMD, but the latest generation of Threadrippers are doing a good job. Faster clockspeeds are preferable then a high clock count. GPU is hardly used by AE. NVidia is more adviceable then AMD and there is no need, if not total incompatibility, for the latest generations. A GTX 10xx series card is just fine. RAM is critical to AE. The more the better, actually, there is no limit. For serious AE work, at least 64GB are adviceable. Keep in mind, that OS alone will take around 4GB just to run. Never assign all memory to AE, the system can crash. Fast drives for caching and project assets are highly adviceable. It's good pratice to seperate cache from project files and assets.
- Don't gain your knowledge from 15'' tutorials, which are actual 36'' and only spend 20% on the topic - gain your knowledge from professionals who work in the field. AE is just to complex to learn all the details quickly.
*Martin
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