Cineversity

I built a model of a video wall and set up a camera move that starts close in on one corner and pulls out to reveal the full wall. It’s pretty simple. I generated TIFFs with an alpha channel and imported them into After Effects for compositing into a video clip. However on playback, the video clip “shudders” as it runs. Everything starts out nice and smooth, but then midway through (10-15 seconds) it’s like it skips a frame, or plays two then holds the third. The weird thing is that it shudders in different places each time you play it. Almost random.

Have you heard of this before? Maybe I’m just the last one to get the memo.

I had the same thing happen with a simple image pan. I tracked across a panorama photo from side to side, and the MOV file also “shuddered.” It, too, was a long shot - 10 or 12 seconds. There wasn’t even a model involved.

I looked up dropped frames and jitters in AE forums and the discussions all centered around matching frame rates. I have adjusted the rates, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I can’t believe that the animated frames are somehow defective. Everything is smooth as silk in C4D. My theory is it must be a setting in After Effects that’s set too high, or some other overload that’s causing it to hiccup on playback. It’s like the hard drive can’t keep up. Only it plays every other video just fine, just not the one with the sweeping camera move.

Any insights would be appreciated. If this keeps up, I will be forced to figure something else out.

I could send you the C4D file but the render is pretty intense. Might be best to just link to the movie file to review if you think that would help.

Hi mford610,

Render a simple sequence from Cinema 4D in a tiny resolution, preferably a timecode burned in that matches your fps exactly, 64pixels wide, or something like that. Use 24 or 30 fps precisely. Ensure the project and render fps are the same; even it shouldn’t matter with a sequence.

In Ae, use a comp-size that is also large enough to see the timecode on the video wall. Try again. Check how much free memory you have.

Is that only true in preview or while rendering it out? In Ae, use a quarter for the preview.

Let me know how that goes. I can’t really see that this is a Cinema 4D problem for now.

If you get even with this a problem, use a 6 image loop instead of the video.

If all of that doesn’t work, set the preview to the problem area, perhaps one second, and Edit> Purge All Memory Cache.
Preview again.

The problem consists even now, with a still? Use the region of interest for a small strip, as in a quarter. If it now persists, you certainly need to check your system.

Let me know how that goes. I guess you have tried small areas with RAM preview of course.

The question is, why do you render the video wall in Ae? Why not in Cinema 4D?

Cheers

I have multiple passes that I put together in one COMP. I can’t do everything in a single pass. Takes too long to render.

Well, mford610, let me know how all the tests go.

Let me add one more suggestion, forget the Multi-Pass, use the beauty pass only to see if that works.

But it really sounds like a theme for an AE forum. However, with no data here, I can’t tell.

I use Ae since 1996, Ae 3.1, and I’m familiar with slow stuff over the decades. But, yes, it can have many reasons.

Fingers crossed, you can locate the bottle neck; It sounds like that.

Cheers