slow playback when previewing keyframe effect

[Sam]

Hello

Apologies if this subject has already been posted...

When previewing the keyframer effect in the effects stack (before the keyframer effect is applied) playback is not smooth, and not all the frames are played. This is obviously problematic as it makes it difficult to judge how the keyframe animation will look before applying the effect.

I have tried adjusting the settings in the preview settings window. Play all makes all the frames play but much slower than real time.

I have tried this in a new small resolution project with nothing in it except a squiggly line and still the playback stutters.

The hardware should be up to it I think?

iMac core 2 duo, 2.8 GHz, 4GB memory, graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512 MB

Plenty of space on the hardrive.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

[Paul Fierlinger]

I never knew KF could play back at all!; I wonder when that happened, but you are right, it's not worth anything. The way I work is to always render whatever it is that I want to see, which really takes very little time and when I'm not satisfied I hit undo and in a flash it's undone so I can try something else.

[malcooning]

Sam, any unrendered effects in the FX stack are not meant to play smoothly until after you apply it to the layer.

When I work with the FX stack I often get smooth playback, but usually it's for simple, undemanding effects. Otherwise, the playback is as you describe - stuttery. Since TVP treats each frame in each layer as a separate bitmap image, when previewing FXs it attempts to apply those effects to the image virtually. In the process, the preview of the timeline layer is displayed at full resolution, which is the main cause for the stuttery playback during FX stack preview. Reducing the quality of the proxy playback doesn't affect the FXs preview because the proxy renders the current timeline, and any unapplied effect is not counted into the render. In equivalent terms, imagine Photoshop playing back different files+effects layers 25 times a second. It's a con of working the bitmap way.

Paul's suggestion above (applying FXs and undoing for tweaking) is the most common method by TVP users (I think). And if you think about it, it's not much different to pressing the 'RAM preview' button in After Effects to see the result of your effects in real-time: You set up your effects > you render a RAM preview > if you're not happy you change somethings in the effects, then have to render a RAM preview again to see the effect real-time.

If to think of how to improve this in future TVP technology, maybe there could be a function within the FX stack panel that allows the user to set a low-quality preview which will automatically proxy-render along with the timeline layer, so when you playback you could get a low quality (and smooth playing) preview of your layer WITH the intended FXs before applying them.

Maybe it's something to post in 'Feature Requests'.

[Sam]

Thanks for your swift responses!

That answers my question then, I just thought there might be some option I was missing!


Sam