• Adobe After Effects

  Adobe After Effects on a MacBook Pro Retina 15-inch with 16GB RAM

  Posted by Nicolai Hervik olsen on March 18, 2013 at 10:31 am

  Hey.

  I am going to start studying again next year, and I need a laptop as I can’t carry a Stationary computer around with me.
  But I am also going to use it for quite heavy After Effects video editing(I’m studying film and tv production).
  Therefore, I am thinking about purchasing the MacBook Pro Retina 15-inch(since Non-Retina doesn’t offer more than 8GB RAM) with the following specifications:
  15-inch: 2.7GHz
  with Retina display
  2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
  Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz
  16GB 1600MHz memory
  512GB flash storage1
  Intel HD Graphics 4000
  NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
  Built-in battery (7 hours)2

  Wil this be enough to run heavy projects in After Effects properly?

  Thanks in advance.

  Andy Batson replied 13 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Ridley Walker

  March 18, 2013 at 3:14 pm

  [Nicolai Hervik Olsen] “Wil this be enough to run heavy projects in After Effects properly?
  “

  It all depends on what you mean by heavy projects. My main production machine is a 12 core Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM, a 2TB RAID, SSD Drive for Cache and 17TB of attached storage.

  I also have the MacBook Pro Retina with 16GB of RAM, while it is a capable laptop, it is not a substitute for my desktop machine. You can add more storage via USB3 and Thunderbolt to the laptop and you’ll need to if you are working on large uncompressed HD video files.

  The other MacBook Pro’s can have 16GB of RAM, Apple just doesn’t configure them that way, you have to get 3rd party RAM and install it yourself.

  Also check this link regarding what affects performance in After Effects.

  https://adobe.ly/pRYOuk
• 

  Andy Batson

  June 25, 2013 at 6:49 pm

  I have a MBP retina with 16gigs(the max) of RAM and the 750gig of SSD system drive. I connect a RAID 1 thunderbolt drive with 2 SATA 7200RPM disks for DSLR, XDCAM and GOPRO footage. I sacrifice some speed for this but I make it up in knowing my I’m 100% redundant right out of the gate. Thus far I’ve been able to run at least 4 simultaneous streams of these multiple types HD footage from this RAID in a multi-cam edit in PP CS6-CC. It also serves as a time machine backup for my system drive. I have not tested with any 2K or 4K cinema style footage. I hope to soon, but wouldn’t be shooting any multi-cam shoots with RED or BMD cameras anyhow. I’m hoping that this system can handle at least a RAW 2K ISO recorded stream in the near future.

  For After Effects CC, I use the same drive for any footage I bring in but typically I’m using AE to create motion graphics and 3D composites. I currently use my system drive for my RAM preview and disk cache files. I’m wondering if attaching a thunderbolt SSD for the preview and disk cache would be more beneficial? Would that increase my performance? Or is the internal system SSD drive best option for this?

  Thanks in advance for any input!

  Andy Batson
  sOUTH aDDISON pICTURE cO.
  https://www.southaddisonpix.com

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