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MacBook Pro with AE CS4?
Hello,
I have a 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro and am wondering if this is adequate for work with AE CS4. I will be upgrading to 4 GB of RAM. I use primarily 1920×1080 24P (ProRes) footage.
On a Lynda.com tutorial, Chad Perkins says, “My little MacBook Pro ran After Effects CS3 without a problem, but it has a really hard time running After Effects CS4…”
Many Thanks,
Chris -
8 Replies
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i have an older 2.16ghz 17″ Macbookpro and until recently only had 1gb of ram, and it handled CS4 really well.
you should be fine. Obviously it won’t be as powerful as an 8 core desktop with 16gb ram etc.
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
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Thanks Adam.
I wonder why the tutorial said this. Chad Perkins did mention that CS4 can handle much more RAM than CS3, and suggested maxing out the computer’s RAM.
With AE CS4, would the people here say its more the RAM or the CPU that makes AE start to run really smoothly (or to put it another way, not enough RAM or not enough CPU that starts to make it choke)?
For example, what might run smoother with AE CS4: a 2.8 GHz quad core with 4 GB of RAM, or a 2.8 GHz duel core with 8GB? Or another example: a 2.8 Ghz four core with 16 GB of RAM vs. an eight core 2.8 GHz with 8 Gb of RAM?
-Chris
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seeing the overall boost my system got when i doubled its ram last week, (haven’t tried AE yet) i’d say put in all the ram you can. I was surprised to find that a 2x1gb chipset for my 3 year old laptop was just over £20.
Couldn’t say about the 2/4 cores. I have only a 2 core laptop and an 8 core tower. Every job is different, and i sometimes find that what you think is the simpler task, the computer will find much harder to do.
I’d find a way to get the 4 core and the 8gb (check out the ram costs buying them from somewhere other than apple…they rip you off for ram.I recently did some intensive work on three commercials at home on the laptop, and yes it did take longer to do things than on the big tower in the office, but it certainly coped adequately
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
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for your system comparison senario… since you primarily want to work with hd projects, having 3.5gb of ram per core and enabling multiprocessing on a mac with slower processors may outperform a mac with faster processors and only 1-2gb of ram per core.
so, can your laptop use cs4? sure it can, but for hd projects and only 4gb of ram, you may be better off disabling the ‘render multiple frames simultaneoulsy’ option. i don’t know how many cores are available on your mbp, but, if you wanted to enable multi-processing, i would use more than 2 cores or you’ll risk starving the processors and reducing performance… this would be true for cs3, also.
another performacne issue can occur if you enable disk caching and only have internal drives for your media too. this can create a data bottleneck on the drvie bus. if this is your setup, then you should also disable disk caching.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
[Adam Taylor]
“…I recently did some intensive work on three commercials at home on the laptop, and yes it did take longer to do things than on the big tower in the office, but it certainly coped adequately”Thanks. Were you using HD footage?
[Kevin Camp]
“…having 3.5gb of ram per core and enabling multiprocessing on a mac with slower processors may outperform a mac with faster processors and only 1-2gb of ram per core.”So a 4 core 2.8 GHz with 16 GB RAM might very well outperform an 8 core 2.8 GHz with 8 GB RAM (with AE CS4)? Interesting.
“…for hd projects and only 4gb of ram, you may be better off disabling the ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’ option…”
OK. Will do.
“…i don’t know how many cores are available on your mbp, but, if you wanted to enable multi-processing, i would use more than 2 cores or you’ll risk starving the processors and reducing performance…”
It is a 2 core, so I can’t use more than 2. What do you suggest I do here? Seems like if I use both my cores the system might become unstable (?).
Is my MBP enough to even work with HD footage?
Thanks,
Chris -
nope, it was a 10bit uncompressed sd pal timeline, although some of the layers were shot in HD using XDcam and HDCam.
Check out https://www.character-online.com/hmaf/hmaf-in-action/
the three teaser ads are the ones i did on the laptop (everything except the initial edit and sound mix)…
if your at all worried, buy a tower. A laptop can handle hd, it just depends on how complex you want to get as to how performance will be affected.
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
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[Chris Davis] “So a 4 core 2.8 GHz with 16 GB RAM might very well outperform an 8 core 2.8 GHz with 8 GB RAM (with AE CS4)? Interesting.”
it may not happen on all projects (not all projects will have the same ram requirements), but with hd frame sizes and higher bit depth comps, the amount of ram to cache frames can go up quickly. when you start running out of ram to process, you’ll get a performance hit.
[Chris Davis] “It is a 2 core, so I can’t use more than 2. What do you suggest I do here? Seems like if I use both my cores the system might become unstable (?).”
it shouldn’t get unstable using both cores as long as you can leave some ram for system resources (in cs4 you can set ae to leave a minimum amount of ram for other processes, it’s a good idea to leave it at the minimum ram requirement for the os). i wouldn’t rcommend running other software while rendering if using both cores, though.
you can do your own benchmarking. test a few projects that you feel will tax your system a bit. try rendering them with multiprocessing on and off to see how they perform.
you can monitor cpu activity using the activity monitor (applications>utilities). you can see how much the cpu(s) are working. when you have mp enabled, you’ll look at the processes called aeselflink, when you have mp off, you’ll look at the foreground process called adobe after effects.
the cpu usage is displayed as a percent. with mp on, you’d like to see values around 90% for each, with mp off you’d like to see a value over 100% (not all effects are multithreaded, so you won’t always see those values that high). if you see significantly lower values, then the processors are likely not getting data fast enough to process efficiently.
[Chris Davis] “Is my MBP enough to even work with HD footage?”
you should be able to work with hd, 4gb is still quite a bit of ram, and will be enough to work with hd. but like adam has mentioned, it just won’t handle it as well as a tower. it’s mainly a question of performance versus portablility… if you need portablility, then it’s a sacrifice worth making, if not, then maybe a tower will work better.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Kevin,
Thanks for the thorough response. I appreciate your time.
-Chris
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