Rendered animation plays at about 3% of normal speed.

touchdown · Post by **touchdown** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 2:28 pm

I just ran a test 50 frame shape movement.

It rendered full uncompressed avi, but when reviewing the file in (vegas, or WM) it's very choppy. So slow it's about 3% of normal.

my machine runs flash and other animation/editing apps just fine.

Is there something I've overlooked.

Sorry, new to the moho/AS

Thanks

touchdown · Post by **touchdown** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 1:14 am

Ok, created a similar animation and ran it on my laptop.

Same thing.

Small dimensions, smooth as glass; larger dimensions = slide-show-choppy.

None of the checkboxes are checked (half-rate, et al).

And, we're only talking 18 frames of animation now (shortened the test).

Doesn't anyone have at least an idea about this?

Tech support says I missed an attribute, but I can't find anything. I can run Flash at 720x480 at 60fps with no problems exported to uncompressed avi.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 2:08 am

i bet your video is too big to your computer.
when you save as avi 720x480 uncompressed, the size is really big (i have videos of less than a minute: almost a 1gb).

touchdown · Post by **touchdown** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:42 am

nah, i've got 8mm movies transferred at 720 x 480 uncompressed and they ARE BIG. 3gb files. They play just as smooth as any would.

Not my machine.

Something I missed in Moho?

both the laptop and desktop do it.

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:45 am

As selgin said, uncompressed video can be huge, and the block might be in the hard drive access speed. Don't know what size you are exporting at, but it can help to split the workload between the drive and the processor. Usually, if I need a lossless AVI I want to play in realtime, I'll encode it with the HuffYUV codec. It still results in a pretty large file, but not nearly as large as straight uncompressed, and will generally play back a lot better, especially on laptops which generally have much slower hard drives than desktops. Still, running that slow sounds like there might be some other issues going on as well, in the computer or OS. An uncompressed file out of Moho/AS is the same as from any other program, so the issue isn't there, but 3% sounds awful slow. Myself, first thing I'd check is if DMA access on your hard drives was enabled. But then, there's a million thing it could be.

touchdown · Post by **touchdown** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 5:44 am

If an uncompressed moho avi is no different than any other avi, then my PC should treat each the same.

I can run 3gb avis smoothly in a stand-alone player and within Vegas preview window.

I've checked DMA and it's fine.

This is really starting to bug me.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 6:11 am

There is obviously some kind of... compression.... on the other videos that play smoothly.

Check the properties... there is probably some kind of codec they use that speeds up the playback.

Uncompressed... is... uncompressed... it is like... a flip book. The video player opens and displays each image.

If ANY type of compression is used it will speed up playback.

That is how DVDs on the computer look so nice.

-vern

7feet · Post by **7feet** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 9:16 am

Yeah, Like heyvern said. Go and get GSpot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/), very handy little program that will tell you the codec you are using, and a raft of other details about various and sundry video files. Take the 3 gig video file you were talking about and see what it says for playback bitrate. You could have, say an MPG that is the direct equivalent of a full DVD around that size, and it'll play fine. But if you convert it to uncompressed video, you may well have a 100 gig (or more) file that'll give your computer a serious case of the hiccups. Compression is more than just keeping storage sizes down. Mass storage, like hard drives in particular, has never advanced in speed like CPU's have. Go back a few years when a 1 gig processor was state-of-the-art, and a 7200 RPM drive was pretty good. Now, a 7200 is pretty standard, but the processors smoke. That's the bottleneck, and likely to be for a while.

That's why I suggested something like the HuffYUV codec. It can work either straight up lossless, with a healthy loss of file size. Or just perceptually lossless, and much smaller sizes without the artifacts (however small) you might expect from most codecs that are intended for distribution. There are a number of others, but thats the one I use for intermediates if I'm going to be doing a lot of post processing or visual FX kinda stuff. I wish I could afford a big ol' stack of RAID arrays, but until then thats the way I myself get around that bottleneck.

Uncompressed... is... uncompressed... it is like... a flip book.

That's the nature of our visual system. That's why animation works at all. If our visual cortex could process at 1000 frames per second, movies would never have been developed at all. It's all based on us seeing things in a pretty pokey manner, with visual snapshots being blended together in the brainpan. If it's fast enough, your head says it's okay. If it's slow, it gets confusing. That's why I (we?) have some trouble interpreting how our animations are gonna come out when the playback gets slow, we don't seem to be built to see things that way and it takes some training to interpret it properly at a lower speed.

Sorry, drifted off there. Only so much data can flow through the system. There's tons of diagnostics around to tell you how much that is. Its good to know how much raw data you can process, and then go from there.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 10:41 am

The first test you should try is to render a compressed and an uncompressed avi of the same length and dimensions in px. Try a really crappy compressor like Sorensen which looks awful but reduces file size drastically. Play both files.

touchdown · Post by **touchdown** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 6:03 pm

Okay.

I ran Gspot on the 4gb file and it showed the following:
-Codec: dvsd,
-Name: DVC/DV Video

Under the "container" section it showed:
-DV type 2 AVI
-OpenDML (AVI 2.0)

There were some other items but they appeared to be a percentage breakdown of the file's contents, (e.g., 74% video, 24% audio, etc)

I also could see the difference in Codecs -v- quality/speed

I tried the WME encoder but had to go grab the WM 9 VCM pack. Interestingly that helped smooth out compressed avi at 720 x 480 significantly.

I tried rendering the avi uncompressed, stuck it into Vegas 7, and rendered it out as mpg-2 (as it would be as an element in an overall dvd project) and it played poorly when viewed through the DVDA (or Encore, or whatever you happen to use).

So, my question to you all is this:

What export format do you prefer for animations that are going straight to DVD format (after being edited in Vegas, and maybe a "post" touchup in AE), and what Codecs do you use?

Your patience in this is really appreciated btw.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 8:27 pm

AE should have an export for DV format that can be burned to a Video DVD.

Also whatever software you use for creating Video DVDs would indicate what format is needed.

I use Mac so... uh... it's kind of easy. I convert everything using either QT Pro... or just import my uncompressed... un-anything... full-res video directly into iMovie and go straight to iDVD.

These programs handle all the conversions to burn my DVDs.

For best results you want to do all editing on uncompressed video. The last step is exporting for the DV format from AE.

-vern

touchdown · Post by **touchdown** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 12:41 am

I guess my next question is:

How do I effectively review my moho clip at project resolution to make sure everything is where it needs to be (timing, tweening, etc) and still send it into Vegas for editing as an uncompressed?

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 12:54 am

Simple....

do a low resolution test preview to check for timing etc.

I believe that is what most of us do.

I do tons and tons of quick, small test renders before I ever do a final. The finals take so long to render I want to make sure I get as much perfect as I can.

I also do "nearly" full resolution output using mpg4 for previews as well. They take almost as long to render as a final but look great and play smoothly.

-vern