JamesTaylor Posted July 25, 2007 Share Posted July 25, 2007 What type of systems do people implement for compiling their animations... do you use particular hardware / mnethods etc. I would imagine that the method i use is pretty standard, that is rendering across a number of node and saving to central networked location. the problem i have comes when importing the sequenced files into the post production app. Once compiled it becomes painfully slow to output the final movie file. I'm putting this slowness down to the fact that i'm working with files across a network and that come the point of actually "rendering" the final output the application can't pull each sequenced file across quick enough... i.e the network is acting as a bottle neck??? I've thought the answer may be to use external HDs that can be moved from a network location when rendering the scene from 3d application to a local drive when working with the sequences in post production. However, with the no. of animations myself and colleges can be working on at the same time it could become a problem keeping track of what is where or HDs being needed in more than one location at any given time etc. so what proceedures do you use to create an efficient pipeline for the journey your individual rendered frames take from 3d scene through render farm to saved loacation into post production application and out to a final movie file??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted July 25, 2007 Share Posted July 25, 2007 James, How many layers do you usually have in an AE file? The only speed problems Ive encountered when compiling (and we have a sh*t network) is when I have about 20 transparencies in AE. This slows the machine to a crawl, but its a computation issue not a network one. I seriously doubt the network you have is impacting on compilation time. All it has to do is pull a frame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesTaylor Posted July 26, 2007 Author Share Posted July 26, 2007 the number of layers being used is pretty minimal... the latest one that is giving issues only has two camera paths, 3 stills and some animated photoshop layers as an intro. The entire sequence of stills is only 680mb. watching the compiling process on screen it seems to be writing / pulling about a frame per second (with the output being written to desktop) with the previous job, which had a decent number of camera paths, some simple anitation text and material ID Matte layers extracted from RPFs, i ended up copying the entire 35gb worth of rendered sequences across to my machine to edit locally as it was causing havoc with the server and other people accessing their job files??? I don't particularly remember these issues in times gone by??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatch Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 What type of server are you using and what is the speed of your network? Have you thought about using proxies in your compositing app to speed up your editing process? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesTaylor Posted July 26, 2007 Author Share Posted July 26, 2007 the server is a little old now, however its a hyperthread p4, not sure what cpu speed, running windows server 03. The network is gigabit. we're shortly going to make the move over to a network storage solution rather than actually having a full blown server machine. I don't really seem to have much of an issue during editing... its really is just compiling the final output, as i say it becomes painfully slow on what should be a relatively easy task. As Tom suggested it may simply be the calculation phase, yet i don't remember the process taking as long previously.... this may actually be the main problem! my memory distorting the time it took!! and the fact the our animations are ever increasing in length??? Still if anyone has specific setups / methods for dedicated post production suites and file management of the renders from the nodes to the suite etc. it'd be good to hear about them as a dedicated Post Suite may well be the way forward for us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 James, I ran some frames this morning. I have a dual xeon and 2 gig ram. I think its probably comparable to your machines over there. 1001 frame (30 fps) drive-by compiled in AE using divx plugin: 5min 34secs. Divx settings attached. Just for you to compare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesTaylor Posted July 26, 2007 Author Share Posted July 26, 2007 Thanks Tom, just ran the test, same settings as your self but with 1500 frames. Across the network 4min 54sec.... when files copied to loacl machine 1min 18secs i guess its more a case of my memory playing tricks on me and the fact that i'm pushing more at AE to calculate - as you suggested!!. I think we'll still be looking to finding an effective way to be working on files locally given the time difference on that quick test Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 Yes thats a huge difference. I may have a look at a similar solution here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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