CDL for After Effects

Here's a little AE plug-in for applying CDLs. AE currently provides a plug-in for reading a CDL file, but the settings remain hidden and picking the .cc file is not scriptable. This plug-in comes with a script that will read a CDL file, and another to write a CDL based on your settings. Free and open source. Enjoy!

Download
version: 1.0
date: 15 April 2024
Mac | Win

ProEXR 2.6

If you've been keeping your After Effects up to date you're already running ProEXR 2.6, which adds some performance optimizations to the AE plug-ins. Standard scanline multi-channel EXR files receive a modest speed improvement, while tiled EXRs will read about 3x faster in this version. And if you have a multi-part EXR file, the individual parts are now read on-demand for faster previews and more efficient rendering.

These optimizations were made possible by Harsh Patil from Apple's Pro Workflow Team, who analyzed the OpenEXR plug-in's performance when loading some real-world EXR sequences from various renderers. I warned him that Windows users were going to benefit from his optimizations as much as Mac, and he said Apple was fine with that! Thanks, Harsh!

BRAWconverter

BRAWconverter is a command line program for converting Blackmagic RAW files into image sequences. It uses Blackmagic's public SDK to convert the BRAW file to RGB, complete with various color transformations, etc. It can output OpenEXR, DPX, PNG, TIFF, and JPEG.

BRAWconverter is free and open source. Enjoy!

Version: 1.0
Date: 11 September 2020
Download Mac

ProEXR 2.5

Today marks the release of Adobe After Effects 2020, which includes ProEXR 2.5. In fact, improved multi-channel performance is one of the highlighted features in this version of AE. Users who had previously installed version 2.0 have already been enjoying the extra speed, but now it's shipping with AE itself.

ProEXR 2.5 gets rid of the separate ProEXR AE plug-in, which has been merged into the main OpenEXR plug-in. That means AE now ships with the features in ProEXR AE, such as the ability to set up your layered comps for you, as well as export layered EXR files. To have AE set up comps for you, import your EXRs using AE's regular Import File dialog, and then tell it to Import As Composition, which is very easy to miss. Fans of the old File menu item can bring it back by editing their AE preferences file.

Import As Composition

Also coming along for the ride is the Cryptomatte plug-in that first appeared in ProEXR 2.0. In addition, ProEXR 2.5 uses newly added AE APIs to support the reading and writing of timecode with EXR files. And finally, the EXtractoR and IDentifier interfaces have been re-done, getting rid of their modal dialogs in favor of menus right in the Effect Controls Window.

The easiest way to get ProEXR 2.5 is to just start using the new version of AE. For people sticking with older versions, you can still download the plug-ins from the ProEXR site.

Enjoy!

The joys of an antique keyboard

Apple Extended Keyboard (AEK) photo by bujcich

The best tech I’ve bought this year is a keyboard made in 1987.

ProEXR 2.0

Version 2.0 of ProEXR is now available. The major new addition is support for Cryptomatte in After Effects.

Cryptomatte is a clever improvement over OpenEXR’s ID channels, which have been supported by ProEXR since the beginning, but in practice are rarely used. The problem with an ID channel is that each pixel can only specify a single ID, so small things like antialiasing, motion blur, and depth of field won’t work properly. Using some tricks involving 32-bit float EXR channels and cryptographic hashes, Cryptomatte gives you the ID channels you always wanted, fully functional. Just turn on Cryptomatte in a supported 3D renderer, set up the comps in After Effects using ProEXR AE, select the Cryptomatte effect, and click in your comp to generate perfect mattes for any object(s) you choose.

Since Cryptomatte uses a series of EXR channels to work its magic, developing this plug-in exposed some inefficiencies in the OpenEXR file module, which has now been updated to always cache channels and headers. In extreme cases involving EXR sequences with many channels, the speedup can be as high as 20x. I encourage all multi-channel EXR enthusiasts to replace the plug-in that ships with AE.

Enjoy!


Update: More information about this release and Cryptomatte in a ProVideo Coalition article by Chris Zwar!

RenderGarden

Got a new product sold though Mekajiki: RenderGarden. I suppose the tagline sums it up best: it's not a farm, just a little garden. As opposed to full farm management software like Pixar's Tractor, RenderGarden is just a couple of scripts. But it's cheap and easy, letting you get a little After Effects render farm garden going in minutes.

A big benefit of using RenderGarden vs. the AE render queue is that you can run multiple render processes simultaneously, even on a single computer. If After Effects were fully multi-threaded this would not be much help, but in AE's current state RenderGarden can often double or triple rendering speeds, meanwhile leaving After Effects available for you to continue working.

Programs like Tractor have a centralized database of their various render tasks. A hack used by RenderGarden is that the filesystem itself is the database, with the priority of the various jobs controlled by their place in your drive's hierarchy, their status determined by naming conventions. This system isn't as bullet-proof as Tractor, but it's simple, cheap, and works for small-scale users and teams looking for a little render farm functionality.