I was trying to use after effects on a laptop and it just wasn't cutting it, so I went out and bought a new desktop computer (i7-3770K, 32GB RAM, Win7x64, 2TB hard disk) with advice from a relative, in hopes of achieving better performance in AE.
The RAM previews seem OK- about 1/3 - 1/2 of realtime speed. I'm satisfied there. But when it comes to rendering, it is terribly slow. I have a 2min30sec project (4750 frames) that boots along for the first ~1000 frames, then just drops off completely (around 1 fps). The estimated render time goes from 5 minutes, to 20 minutes, to 3 hours awful quick.
I have some clips with Magic Bullet Denoiser, Looks, and Mojo. A few titles that jump around the screen. The project is made up of small clips (1-2 seconds) built into around 10 different compositions.
I have tried a few different settings for multiproccesing, they all get a similar result:
a) 3GB RAM for other programs, multiproccessing off
b) 3GB ram for other programs, 0 cores reserved for other programs, 3GB RAM per core
c) 16 GB RAM for other programs, multiprocessing off
I have been using H.264 "best quality" preset for rendering. I have read in these forums to try rendering "lossless" and then converting after- I will try as soon as this render finishes (in a few hours...)
Any ideas on how I can speed this up using the equipment I've got?
--edit-- I should mention, I am currently using option A, and my task manager shows ~50% CPU usage and varies between 19-23GB RAM Usage. I'm not a genius with this stuff but it looks like my hardware is not the problem.