Warp Stabilizer taking forever?

[Hikarikus]

I stamped upon a rather big problem for me. I usually stabilize between 50 and 60 files at once in After Effects, but since like a week, they just won't stabilize.

I have to stabilize only 1 video file at a time, otherwise, it will be stuck on the second step of stabilizing forever. Some tips for that? It drives me nuts, I reinstalled the AE and still - nothing. The same problem. Any kind of solution? It now takes like 2 hours to do the same thing, that I could manage to do in 5 minutes (and 2 hours of leaving computer on it's own).

I use After Effects CS6 (simply the best!)

[Mylenium]

Nobody can tell you much without proper system info and other details like the format of the clips. Frankly it simply sounds like you are running out of temporary disk space and the process can't store its data or duplicate the clips temporarily for analysis. Do a bit of housekeeping. Also check your audio and video CoDecs and the relevant settings. Sometimes a simple change in your audio setup can have the weirdest effects.

Mylenium

[Hikarikus]

It was good for about a year, now it broke down.

Win7 Pro x64

i5-4590 on stock 3.3 GHz
16 GB of DDR3, with about 9.5 GB free before After Effects starts. AE uses about 5 GB of RAM.
MSI 950 GTX, running slightly overclocked.
AE, temp folders, video source folders and output folders on SSD partition.
Over 70 gb of temp disk space free on SSD partition.

Files are .MOV files from Nikon D600 (about 24 mpbs btrate) and also .MOVs, from Canon 5d mk III (28 mbps bitrate)

Everything is just the way it was, and it worked perfectly well. Now, it just drives me crazy...

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

The most efficient way to use Warp Stabilizer is to:

• Trim the clip to just the parts you will use in the final edit plus a few frames ("handles") on the head and tail of each shot so you can fine tune the edit layer using the footage panel and setting in and out points for the footage
• Create a new comp from the trimmed shot
• Run Warp Stabilizer in the new comp and add the footage to the Render Cue
• Choose a suitable visually lossless production format from the Output module settings
• If you do not have a very good understanding of video formats and compression choose "Lossless" from the standard presets rather than customizing your own settings
• Render your digital intermediate (DI) and either add it to the AE project or if you plan to edit in Premiere Pro or other NLE, add it to the project in your NLE
• Purge all cache and preview files in After Effects before moving on to the next clip.

The Warp Stabilizer is a tremendous resource hog, bloats AEP files sometimes to the point of being incredibly fragile, and is really not intended to be used to stabilize a 50 or 60 shots and keep all of that temporary data inside the project file. Your existing workflow is simply over taxing the system, and if you are not pre-editing the clips you are stabilizing you are wasting a tremendous amount of time. Your workflow either caught up with you or something changed on your system that is using up resources that were not used up before. That could be anything from a software update to some malware infecting your system or even a new anti virus definition...