System weak for Adobe After Effects?

[zLukez]

I have an i7 6800k, 16gb of Corsair RAM, GTX 1070, 250GB SSD, and 1TB Hard Drive. When I look at performance, I don't see any of them really maxing out except for possibly RAM. What can I do to speed up my render times? It takes about 35 minutes to render a 4 minute video I made.

 

[kenrivers]

What version of After Effects are you using? Does the video in question have a lot of special effects, animations, or anything else special that may impact rendering time?

 

[zLukez]

No it doesn't. Just Gaugasian blur I think. I'm using the latest version.

 

[kenrivers]

What format is the source file in and in what format are you trying to render the file out as? Have you checked the settings to see how much RAM is allocated by the program? Don't believe there are settings in AfterEffects for the CPU or GPU (except whether of you are able to use CUDA). So to Preferences and then Memory. There you will be able to allocate more RAM to AE.

 

[zLukez]

The project is rendered out in AVI, and the source file is just audio, pictures, and animations.

 

[kenrivers]

Have you tried rendering to formats other than .AVI just to see if it makes a difference in rendering time? I take it the pictures, animation and audio were added to the timeline individually and were not part of a single video clip. Is that correct?

 

[zLukez]

Yes, they were added individually. I would like to render in h.264, however I don't know how to get it to work with After Effects.

 

[kenrivers]

Do you have any video editing software? If yes, have you tried putting together the clip in it instead of After Effects? If you are using AE for the animations you could try creating the animations in AE, rendering the animations and them importing that clip into your video editor.

 

[zLukez]

That would be difficult. However, I guess that is something I could do.

 

[kenrivers]

Is it difficult because recreating what you have already done would be difficult or because you lack video editing software? Before starting from scratch again you might want to check out the Adobe AE forums. Here is one example: Importing After Effects File into Premiere.

 

[zLukez]

Recreating what I did in After Effects would be difficult, and my skill is mainly in After Effects.

 

[kenrivers]

I understand. Not sure what to tell you to shorten the render time. You might want to look into a video editor at some point. Editing video is much easier in an editor than it would be in After Effects. Since you know how to use AE you really shouldn't have a problem learning to use a video editing application. I'm not suggesting you recreate your video. Have you checked Preferences to see how much memory is allocated to AE?

 

[zLukez]

Yes basically only 2gb of RAM left available ( I have 16 gb).

 

[kenrivers]

Kind of rules out the amount of RAM as an issue. Are you running any other programs while rendering from AE? Never mind, I think you answered that in your first post when you mentioned performance. It is entirely possible that it just takes that long to render with the animations. If you know anyone else who uses AE you could copy the project folder and try it on another computer.

 

[zLukez]

Alright thanks. Although, I did try it with another computer, there was essentially no difference or maybe 5-10 minutes off. (i3 with 8gb ram).

 

[kenrivers]

Maybe someone else will chime in and be able to help you figure out a way to speed up the rendering time. I don't know what else to tell you to try.

 

[zLukez]

Alright thanks for your help and persistence.