I hadn’t noticed this features introduction to the After Effects Beta till I saw this video from Creative Dojo.
This will clean up After Effect Timelines to now end, as you can basically add Track Mattes nodally, so you can add just one to a comp and use it for as many layers as you want, and if you save to an older version it will automatically add to all of the layers it is attached to.
This makes Track mattes the best of both world! OMG, need this for adjustment layers too, so they can be added selectively.
I have been using Autokroma’s BRAW Studio Plug in since I got my Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6k Pro, because it allows you to select multiple clips to decode BRAW in Premiere vs the Black Magic plug in that works on one clip at a time.
I have run into issues with using these clips in after effects, with the current version I get the effects flashing on and off throughout the clip. You can see the results here.
This is a short from the Misadventures of Bear that I am currently working on finishing.
Talking to support and moving back to 2.7.1 resolved the flashing, but then removed the added built in LUT, which also screwed up the green screen.
My only solution was to use the Plug-in to save out sidecar files of the BRAW settings, and then compress them in Media Encoder which uses the settings of the sidecar and render the clips into ProRES HQ. I then had to individually relink the clips in After Effects, but then I could get the render to work with the correct settings applied.
I am still in contact with autokroma’s support, so hopefully this will get resolved, but they are having trouble recreating the errors on their end.
So I am in the middle of making 2 short films shot on my BlackMagicDesign 6k Pro, and I am shooting in 6k 23.976 Blackmagic Raw Constant 8:1, and both have serious visual effects. And I have been having issues with running out of memory in After Effects.
Now my machine is getting old, it is a an iMac Pro with the upgraded Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16 GB of RAM, but I only have 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, which I am thinking is the main issue. And I am running of a RAID 5 with 36 GB of mechanical drive space, which has at least half empty. And I have even moved the After Effects Disk Cache to a fast external SSD with a 250 GB cache.
For BRAW support I am using the amazing BRAW Studio from Autokroma. This plug in really is great in Premiere Pro because it allows selection of multiple BRAW clips to allow editing if they are all shot the same, and also to save out a sidecar file easily so any program can see what you have done. It works in Premiere Pro and After Effects and replaces Blackmagic’s BRAW plugin which has more limited functionality.
Still using this I do seem to be having RAM issues with RAM previews where my RAM is running out very quickly and won’t render out a whole shot. I find myself having to restart after effects to get a longer RAM preview, and many times even a computer restart.
Now I am also doing a lot of green screen and using Maxon formerly Red Giant’s Primatte Keyer 6 to key, so that might be also a RAM hog here. I have never had an issue with 4k Alexa ProRES footage in green screen though.
I tend to think it might be the BRAW , as on some shots I used BRAW Studio to do the initial grade and save out a sidecar, and then render them in Media Composer in ProRES HQ. With this footage I get much longer renders. Now I know it is less compressed, as the files are larger, and with the LUT added, there is less to decode, but this is very drive intensive.
And sure the 6K is bigger than 4K, and eating more RAM.
And the new M1 chips with ProRES processor wouldn’t help here, because it is BRAW, and 128 GB of shared memory and video memory doesn’t seem like a whole bunch more.
I am hoping the whole lesson isn’t that BRAW 6K is just too processor intensive.
