Slow rendering on stills with PPRO 2.0....anyone else? at DVinfo.net

Wade Spencer · September 6th, 2006, 02:49 PM

Anyone getting extremely slow render times on imported stills?

I'm doing a video slideshow for a client...about 300 photos that have been scanned and being set to music. Of course, I'm doing a lot of panning and zooming on the photos, and the slow rendering is driving me crazy.

I searched google for "premiere pro 2.0 slow rendering times" and found this:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bbe6b0c/5

Quote:

I have exactly the same problem of rendering high res stills with ppro 2.0. Can you make this easy test : create a 4000x4000 pixels still under photoshop. Put it on the timeline of ppro 2.0 for a duration of 5 sec. Add a scale keyframe to the "in point" for a value of 30, add a scale keyframe to the "out point" for a value of 10. Try to render. For me, it takes more than 4 minutes !

What is strange is that if the two values of the scaling remains over 50, there is no rendering problem.

If you set : in 51 / out 52, it takes a few seconds to render.

If you set : in 48 / out 49, it takes a few minutes.

Apparently when you take the scale of the clip smaller than 50%, the rendering times increase quite a bit. I just wondered if anyone else has had this problem and found a solution, other than keeping the stills small (limiting the amount of panning and zooming you can do)?

Thanks!

Lloyd Coleman · September 7th, 2006, 01:51 PM

Yes, the render times do slow significantly if you are using high resolution stills. The solution is to resize the images before you bring them into Premiere. This not only helps the render times, but also improves general timeline responsiveness, reduces project size, reduces flicker and produces better quality images in the final product.

If you are creating a standard resolution project, the final output is 720x480 pixels in NTSC. I find that sizing my pictures somewhere between 1,000 to 1,200 pixels wide will allow me to zoom or pan as much as I need and still keep the quality good. If I have an unusual case where I have to do some extreme zooming I will size that picture larger. Higher resolution pictures have so much detail that wherever you have sharp edges, especially horizontal, you will see alot of flicker when you create any zoom or other movement. I also think that Photoshop or other programs do a better job at downsizing the images and would rather do it before I bring them into Premiere, where it will have to downsize the images to 720x480.

The 4000x4000 pixel picture that was used in the example you posted creates an image that has 16,000,000 pixels. If you reduce it to 1000x1000 it is only 1,000,000 pixels. That is 16 times smaller! Just like if you were hauling a load in a pickup truck, if you reduce the load by 16 times your truck will be more responsive and easier to manage.

Wade Spencer · September 7th, 2006, 11:15 PM

Everything you said it true, and resizing the pics first is a good method to not have to worry about it.

I did the same test mentioned in that thread. Anything over 50% renders almost instantly, and under 50% takes forever. It just sounds like a bug that Adobe will hopefully fix :-)

Jimmy McKenzie · September 7th, 2006, 11:59 PM

Think about the task you are presenting to your processor to pan a field of megapixels and render to a rastered output interpolated and usually output in the absence of hardware rendering!

My stills enter the timeline at 1500 x 1200 ...

Do all your basic creative and prep outside of Premiere ... it is an assembly program, not a creative one. The creative occurs in Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and when you light your scene, among other things prior to to pressing record on your camera.

Christopher Lefchik · September 9th, 2006, 01:43 AM

I ran into this problem recently on a project of mine. I thought of creating a post about my experience and my surprising solution - which ended up creating more questions than answers - but never got around to it. So, here it is now.

I was creating a memorial video for my grandma who had just passed away. The video was to be shown at her funeral, which was the next morning - well, by that time it was so late it probably was the next morning.

The project consisted of twenty-four 5 megapixel images; about seven of them were Photoshop images of which I had imported a single layer with transparency. All had at least animated scale changes applied, and some had position changes as well. I also had five short video clips. The total project length came to about two minutes forty-five seconds.

I was ready to render the project to check it, as preview quality can only go so far. I hit Enter, and what should my unbelieving eyes see but that Premiere Pro reported it would take over five hours to render this under three minute sequence. Ouch.

As slow as Premiere Pro was rendering each frame, such a time estimate was believable. But I did not have the luxury of enough time to find out.

Obviously this wasn't going to work. I had to do something, anything. I fired up After Effects, imported the Premiere Pro project, and rendered out a video file. Guess what? After Effects rendered the exact same sequence in under six minutes! Six minutes!

Explain that one to me.

I next used Adobe Dynamic Link to import the After Effects sequence directly into Premiere Pro. Rendering the After Effects sequence in Premiere Pro required about six to ten minutes, about the same or not much more than rendering directly from After Effects.

I am not sure what to make of this astonishing speed difference between Premiere Pro and After Effects when rendering high resolution images. Maybe one could claim that Premiere Pro does not handle high resolution images as efficiently as After Effects, but five hours versus six minutes? That is a horrendous, shocking difference. If After Effects can render a high quality AVI in six minutes of a sequence which Premiere Pro requires five hours to render, something is definitely wrong with Premiere. That is quite frankly indefensible in my view.

Chris Barcellos · September 9th, 2006, 11:10 AM

A much simpler resolution inside Premiere is to take you high resolution photo onto the time line. Shorten it to about 1/2 second in length, then render it to a video clip, then you can add as many as you want to you time line to make it the exact length you want.

Christopher Lefchik · September 9th, 2006, 09:39 PM

That is a fine solution for static images, but it won't work if one needs to do any kind of animated motion. In my case, all my images were animated.

September 7th, 2006, 11:59 PM	#4
Jimmy McKenzie Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Waterloo Ontario Posts: 721	Not a bug ... Think about the task you are presenting to your processor to pan a field of megapixels and render to a rastered output interpolated and usually output in the absence of hardware rendering! My stills enter the timeline at 1500 x 1200 ... Do all your basic creative and prep outside of Premiere ... it is an assembly program, not a creative one. The creative occurs in Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and when you light your scene, among other things prior to to pressing record on your camera.

September 9th, 2006, 11:10 AM	#6
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	A much simpler resolution inside Premiere is to take you high resolution photo onto the time line. Shorten it to about 1/2 second in length, then render it to a video clip, then you can add as many as you want to you time line to make it the exact length you want. __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

September 7th, 2006, 01:51 PM	#2
Lloyd Coleman Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Salt Lake City, UT Posts: 256	Yes, the render times do slow significantly if you are using high resolution stills. The solution is to resize the images before you bring them into Premiere. This not only helps the render times, but also improves general timeline responsiveness, reduces project size, reduces flicker and produces better quality images in the final product. If you are creating a standard resolution project, the final output is 720x480 pixels in NTSC. I find that sizing my pictures somewhere between 1,000 to 1,200 pixels wide will allow me to zoom or pan as much as I need and still keep the quality good. If I have an unusual case where I have to do some extreme zooming I will size that picture larger. Higher resolution pictures have so much detail that wherever you have sharp edges, especially horizontal, you will see alot of flicker when you create any zoom or other movement. I also think that Photoshop or other programs do a better job at downsizing the images and would rather do it before I bring them into Premiere, where it will have to downsize the images to 720x480. The 4000x4000 pixel picture that was used in the example you posted creates an image that has 16,000,000 pixels. If you reduce it to 1000x1000 it is only 1,000,000 pixels. That is 16 times smaller! Just like if you were hauling a load in a pickup truck, if you reduce the load by 16 times your truck will be more responsive and easier to manage.

September 7th, 2006, 11:15 PM	#3
Wade Spencer Major Player Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Wellsboro, Pa Posts: 285	Everything you said it true, and resizing the pics first is a good method to not have to worry about it. I did the same test mentioned in that thread. Anything over 50% renders almost instantly, and under 50% takes forever. It just sounds like a bug that Adobe will hopefully fix :-)

September 9th, 2006, 01:43 AM	#5
Christopher Lefchik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: US Posts: 1,152	I ran into this problem recently on a project of mine. I thought of creating a post about my experience and my surprising solution - which ended up creating more questions than answers - but never got around to it. So, here it is now. I was creating a memorial video for my grandma who had just passed away. The video was to be shown at her funeral, which was the next morning - well, by that time it was so late it probably was the next morning. The project consisted of twenty-four 5 megapixel images; about seven of them were Photoshop images of which I had imported a single layer with transparency. All had at least animated scale changes applied, and some had position changes as well. I also had five short video clips. The total project length came to about two minutes forty-five seconds. I was ready to render the project to check it, as preview quality can only go so far. I hit Enter, and what should my unbelieving eyes see but that Premiere Pro reported it would take over five hours to render this under three minute sequence. Ouch. As slow as Premiere Pro was rendering each frame, such a time estimate was believable. But I did not have the luxury of enough time to find out. Obviously this wasn't going to work. I had to do something, anything. I fired up After Effects, imported the Premiere Pro project, and rendered out a video file. Guess what? After Effects rendered the exact same sequence in under six minutes! Six minutes! Explain that one to me. I next used Adobe Dynamic Link to import the After Effects sequence directly into Premiere Pro. Rendering the After Effects sequence in Premiere Pro required about six to ten minutes, about the same or not much more than rendering directly from After Effects. I am not sure what to make of this astonishing speed difference between Premiere Pro and After Effects when rendering high resolution images. Maybe one could claim that Premiere Pro does not handle high resolution images as efficiently as After Effects, but five hours versus six minutes? That is a horrendous, shocking difference. If After Effects can render a high quality AVI in six minutes of a sequence which Premiere Pro requires five hours to render, something is definitely wrong with Premiere. That is quite frankly indefensible in my view.

September 9th, 2006, 09:39 PM	#7
Christopher Lefchik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: US Posts: 1,152	That is a fine solution for static images, but it won't work if one needs to do any kind of animated motion. In my case, all my images were animated.