Render Times - Keylight

[adamb51686502]

I'm in desperate need for a solution here. 

I'm working in After Effects 2020.

I'm running on Windows 10, AMD Ryzen 9 3950x 16 core processor, 128GB DDR4 Ram, and 2 Nvidia Quadro RTX-5000 GPU's

I have been working with 4k footage shot on Canon .MXF edited and exported to ProRes 422 for keying. The clip is about 2-3 minutes in duration. My render times are crazy, estimated at over 3 hours...

Hardware acceleration is on. I'm rendering to a server over a 10Gbit connection. 

I need to cut this render time down tremendously, and this machine should be able to output this much quicker. Anyone have any tips or ideas for a solution? Thanks for your help.

[adamb51686502]

I should also state, the footage is 4k, but the composition resolution is only 1920x1080, and encoding to ProRes 422.

[Rick Gerard]

Is there a reason that you are not just keying the MXF footage? It seems like an extra step unless you need to send trimmed clips to someone else to key and edit. Personally I almost never work on any shot in AE that has not already been cut the way it is going to be in the final edit. I don't wast work on frames that are never going to show up in the final project. The only reason I can think of to have a 3-minute take is someone giving a presentation or a talk and you have no audio edits or cutaways.

If you really want to speed up renders take a look at Render Garden. If you are getting paid for your work the utility will pay for its self in a day. I have several background rendering tools but for almost all my work Render Garden is the most efficient, and you don't have to stop working in AE while it is rendering.

[adamb51686502]

Hey Rick, thanks for your comment.

You're asumption is correct. I am editing down the original footage to give to an editor. He's including the unkeyed footage in his edit temporarily until the final render is created for him to drop in/replace. So, the editing up front is so we can isolate the shot(s) we're using from the shoot, have an example in the edit for timing purposes, and also not have to key any frames that won't be used. 

[Rick Gerard]

If you really need to render a DI (visually lossless 10 bit or better digital intermediate) that you can use for keying or render with transparency you might want to try using the GoPro Cineform codec. It is an excellent codec that renders and quickly, it is compatible with all Adobe software, and Trillions of Colors + alpha is no problem. The file size is also very reasonable.