After effects render problems - can anyone help?

Hi there,
I have bought template this file from videohive.net (http://videohive.net/item/explainer-promo/2512991?ref=motioncraver)

Ive done exactly as this video says,
Im having problems with this file as the rendering seems to take way to long for only a few minutes video?..

  1. Once ive added it to render queue
    ive chosen 720 x 480 - the smallest size!
  • I go output lossless >
    Format (H.264) chosen
    Click format options + at bottom left it says: H.264 - 489kb/sec
    (thats a lot?)

When i click render, it says est>remain: 49Hr, 37 min
Surely thats not right?
How long does it take you to render this usually?
This is a few minutes video?

(ps i also tried going Output module > lossless and the chose quicktime movie - Photo JPEG - medium quality,
it also says est>remain: 49Hr, 37 min to render?

Read the comments on the purchase page, someone else says they’re rendering a 2min file and it takes 30 hours, Motioncraver says that’s normal, but you can try reducing render time by taking off motion blur.

It will depend a lot on your machine, if you are on a laptop or don’t have much RAM, poor image card etc. these things take a lot longer, stuff like AFX renders eat a lot of resources, so you could try upgrading your RAM or card as well.

What is your PC spec? What version of AE? Even if you have a low spec PC that seems pretty long, even with motion blur. I work with AE regularly and having looked at the example reckon I’d expect that video at that resolution to render out in less than an hour on a fairly normal PC. There are a few effects that can be real cpu hogs that may be involved and can often be switched off or swapped for little visual impact.

A few tips: always output long renders to lossless image sequences (either tiff with lzw compression or 24bit pngs). If your render crashes halfway through (which is likely given that either the project or PC is sub optimal) then you’ll still have a portion of usable output, and can start a secondary attempt from the last crash point, where as if you use a single file then it’s all lost. You can create a secondary composition that only inputs and renders the image sequence to a lossy format such as h264:- if you get the parameters wrong for this render (i.e too big a file, too low quality), then you can go back and just recompress rather than expend cpu on also regenerating the entire animation.
If you’re still struggling to get a sensible render time, you might consider an online render farm, there are quite a few services where you upload the project and they use a bank of servers to render it out quickly (not very cheap though)

Hi there
I have Adobe After effects CS4

My PC spec is : Intel Core i3 - 2.4ghz
4 gb RAM
64 bit operating system.

the motion blur is clicked off - ie not “pressed in” on the main comp - so thats not an issue

Its weird right - that this rendering says it will take so long?

Yes a PC of that spec should do a lot better. Have you tried rendering other projects? Have you let it proceed for a while to see whether the reported time is just very inaccurate?

first time ive used adobe after effects - so no i dont have any other projects to render…
All i did was download this template and change the text in it!

Yes, let it run for 5 minutes, didnt change the time at all

:frowning:

If you’d be happy to send me the file I can have a look on my pc to see what it reports and whether there’s anything obviously wrong with the set up.

Video effects can often be very heavy, most pro/semi-pro indies or smaller edit suites that use AFX will have something like 16gb RAM and are using considerably less heavy effects like just tweaking the colour, they have video cards that cost over £1k etc. If the firm that built the effect says 2.30 is a typical run time it’s a typical run time.

Best thing to do is to try some other, less resource hungry effects out on a test clip and see how long they take to render, like just slightly adjust the colour balance or contrast or something. If everything is taking hours there’s a problem, if other stuff renders in a good time then it’s just a heavy effect, leave it running while you eat or sleep or whatever.