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AE won’t render on MacPro
I have a 1280×720 project that I’m trying to render out on my dual 3GHZ MacPro(Intel). It gets 1 minute in and I keep getting a image buffer error. I used the secret menu to set to purge every 5 frames on Make Movie and this doesn’t seem to help. I finally gave up and put it on our G5 to render and it’s doing great! I just hope Adobe comes out with an update soon because Rosetta doesn’t seem to be doing the trick with After Effects 7. Does anyone out there have any tips?
3Ghz Dual Intel Mac Pro
4Gb of Ram
After Effects 7
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2Greg Jones
D7,Inc.
Orlando,Fl. -
7 Replies
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[Greg Jones] “Does anyone out there have any tips?”
Yes, my tip is to use software on hardware that manufacturers actually develop for use on that particular platform, whichever that may be.
Adobe has warned people that this version does NOT work on MacBook Pro Intel-based computers but people want to ignore the warning.
As has been said here a number of times: Apple did not give Adobe any warning of their switch to Intel-based systems and Adobe isn’t (nor should they) going to throw out their whole developmental cycle just to facilitate Apple. That would be foolishness, especially after seeing all that Apple has done to many of their 3rd party partners.
I haven’t installed AE7 on my MacBook Pro — and won’t.
Best,
Ron Lindeboom
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Well Ron’s position is clear. But I have a Mac Pro as do you (not a Mac Book pro) and I have not had any problems. That being said I have not tried rending any HD material. If your interested take a look at this.
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=890250If you like, you could use Ron’s suggestion (…use software on hardware that manufacturers actually develop for use on that particular platform…) and buy Shake for half the cost of AE and use that instead. Of course it wasn’t originally developed for the Mac Intel platform but some companies will continue to make software that works on the latest advancements in hardware.
I guess what I’m saying is that it might not be a software/hardware issue. Does it stop rendering at the same frame everytime?
If so what layers start at that point or what other changes to the comp happen at that point?TonyTony
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So I just ran a 00:01:30:00 long render of a 1280 X 720 comp and it worked fine. I used the AE preset called Cells. So from my experience I would say that there is no problem using AE 7 on and Mac Pro Intel machine.
Check your comp for anything that might be happing at the point in which you render stops.
TonyTony
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Hello, Ron.
How are things in Cambria?
Let me respectfully offer another experience on this subject.
I am using After Effects 7 on a MBP. In fact, it’s my main production machine at this time.It works quite well, without significant isuses. As far as speed is concened, look at the irony: yes, it runs much slower than it would if it was Universal, yet it runs at least as fast as the last generation of PPC Powerbooks (this is true since the latest Mac OS X update, which really beefed up Rosetta performance). So, if you’re a Mac user who needs AE on the go, at this point the MacBook Pro is the best option to run it. It doesn’t yet take advantage of the true power of the Core/Core 2 Duo processors, but using it with a PPC based Powerbook (the alternative if you’re a Mac laptop user) wouldn’t be faster, or particularly more reliable. I use it many hours a day, without major reliability issues.
Another interesting bit: AE 7 on a MBP completely supports OpenGL fast previews with the ATI X1600 chipset (Mac OS X 10.4.8 also upgraded OpenGL drivers in a big way). For the first time on a Mac laptop, all of AE Fast previews categories appear as “supported” in the OpenGL info window. So, suddenly, the MBP becomes quite acceptable for AE work: peformance for interactive adjustments is snappier than many G4 and even some G5 machines because of the OpenGL support. Interesting, isn’t it?
And of course, your MBP is ready whenever Adobe releases a Universal version of AE, right? Seeing how decently AE 7 runs on Rosetta, one can’t help thinking a native version should fly on it.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
[TonyTony] “Of course it wasn’t originally developed for the Mac Intel platform but some companies will continue to make software that works on the latest advancements in hardware.”
Tony, Tony, Tony…
Of course Apple is going to support Apple. But I wouldn’t exactly give them bonus points for doing it… Your implication that “some companies will continue to make software that works on the latest advancements in hardware” is almost laughable; this, as you are referring to both hardware and software developed by a single company. God, I’d hope they could do that…it’s sort of a no-brainer, really. ;o)
Contrary to your implication that somehow Adobe is lax in developing for the Intel Macs, Adobe is quite committed to developing on the latest Mac Intel-based platforms — just look at the new Soundbooth and Lightroom programs. But sadly, Apple has demonstrated to many of us that they are not committed to Adobe’s future of developing for the Mac.
Companies who are “developers” can only move just so fast, and whereas the new Lightroom and Soundbooth apps prove Adobe’s commitment to the Mac, they were easier to develop as they are new applications, one which are being developed now. Still, anyone who has downloaded the Beta builds know that these are going to be great apps. But moving After Effects over is like moving a house; oh, it can be done, but it requires expertise and forethought, along with many hours of development, to pull it off.
Adobe’s After Effects team is maniacal about making a stable product. They are not about to just chuck something out there just to say that they now support the new Intel Macs. If you wanted it faster, there is only one culprit in this: Apple. As I have said before, the After Effects team learned of Apple’s Intel move when the rest of us did. If Apple were concerned about getting the Adobe apps over onto the new Macs, they would have notified Adobe. They didn’t. Even in Steve Jobs’ keynote address wherein he introduced the new Intel Macs, it was he who did the Photoshop demo, not anyone from Adobe. And whereas there were a bunch of people present at the roll-out to introduce their tools running on the new Intel Macs, there was no one from Adobe among them. Why? I suspect that there are many reasons and among them, is what is the point of an Adobe person demoing something that they know nothing about…
Adobe has its own development timetable and I find it preposterous to think that Adobe should jump through Apple’s hoop, as if there were no other factor in the world to be considered in development cycles. I think it’s pretty amazing that Adobe has said that they will release a new Universal After Effects in 2007. That is pretty fast for a tool with as much code and third-party integration and plug-in support as is found in After Effects.It’s no secret that the one-time crosstown love affair that was Apple and Adobe is over. In my opinion, Apple is doing all they can to drive off anyone who feeds at the Apple trough — it’s all theirs, so they seem to believe. One-by-one companies have been ousted from the trough and when Apple doesn’t bother to let a major partner like Adobe in on their plans, I think the message is quite clear.
To me, Aperture is a warning shot over the bow of the Good Ship Adobe that Apple has its eye on the imaging market — the market that Adobe has owned with Photoshop. While Aperture is far from Photoshop, I have little doubt that coding gnomes are hard at work in the bowels of Apple’s Cupertino labs, churning and burning through a program that they will fold into Final Cut Studio and which will do imaging akin to that done in Photoshop.
I also have little doubt that Apple’s successor to Shake (which they recently announced would be forthcoming in 2008, but which I expect to see a preview of at NAB 2007), will incorporate much of the streamline of Motion and the compositing prowess of Shake into what Apple hopes will be an After Effects killer.
Me, I believe that Apple is going to continue it’s Narcissian parade to be the only one left standing in the orchard of Apples. But Apple made a deadly mistake in their logic — they allowed Adobe to acquire Macromedia. That is a mistake that is going to haunt Apple for years to come. Why? (I am glad you asked!) Because of Flash. Flash is far more than just a graphic format and when you really study the implications and the support apps and processes out there, it is much more akin to the “independent operating system floating on top of your operating system” that JAVA was promised to be. It wasn’t, not because the idea wasn’t good; it was just that Sun was not in a position to foment such a thing — but Adobe is. And since you ask, “Pray tell, Boomie, why are you so excited about all this?” — I will tell…
Flash as a format incorporates much more than technology to make irritating banner ads and stuff. It is a scalable compression and delivery format that can work from the largest streaming servers, all the way down to cell phones and PDAs. It also has more market share than both Quicktime and Windows Media combined. Marry this to the ASP model developed within many companies, and tie that together with the fact that most companies are now doing all their licensing and upgrades, updates, etc., online. If you can envision the possibilities, it gives the developer of Flash an inside track that simply cannot be overstated in its importance.
Adobe itself learned the power of holding the upper-hand with Flash — and the inside track position that it gives the developer — when Adobe tried to compete with Flash with Livemotion. Many Flash artists loved the :Livemotion interface and the fact that it greatly simplified Flash production. Still, at version two, Adobe had to pull the plug because they couldn’t compete with Flash’s hegemony on the Net.
Because I can see many great things ahead for the market due to these factors (many implications of which I will lay out here in the Cow and in the magazine in the days just ahead), I am in the midst of converting my office to Windows, at long last. Do I hate Macs? No, I have loved using Apple Computers since I started with them in 1983 but I am a content creator/communicator and I can more easily envision a world without Apple than I can a world without Adobe.
Your mileage may vary,
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net -
Hi Ron,
That statement of mine “Of course it wasn’t originally developed for the Mac Intel platform but some companies will continue to make software that works on the latest advancements in hardware.”
was one part cheap shot one part to my point, just because it was Apple themselves that worked the software coding (the coding gnomes in the bowels of Apple’s Cupertino labs I sure as well) doesn’t make the fact that a company took a complex program and got it running on the new hardware any less relevant.At this point we’ve gotten off the beaten path and should take it somewhere else. But before I go I would say that I am as upset at Adobe for what I see as neglect of the Mac user (again there is no Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio Premium for Mac) as you seem to be at Apple for making applications that compete with Adobe (Soundbooth and Lightroom returning the favor). Competition is suppose to help development and pricing. btw Adobe after purchasing macromedia raised prices on the old Macromedia products.
If you want my conspiracy theory on the Apple Adobe relationship I say it started to go bad when Apple inculded pdf viewing and file saving into it’s OS.
As far as Flash is concerned I think I have finally reach snob status cause I say that flash stuff is for the web guy ;>O
TonyTony
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[TonyTony] “If you want my conspiracy theory on the Apple Adobe relationship I say it started to go bad when Apple inculded pdf viewing and file saving into it’s OS.”
Apple quit buying Adobe roses long before that, Tony. There are many issues that contributed to this, and just one part of where it started was with issues in Quicktime that would go unresolved year after year. These kinds of issues affected not only Adobe but Truevision, Media 100, Avid and others. One of the “silver linings” in the ominous dark cloud of Apple’s purchase of FCP from Macromedia (from the viewpoint of those who now had to compete with Apple), was that at least now some of these issues got addressed.
Back in 1994 or -5 when Apple was in real financial disarray (with Gil Amelio at the helm and things so falling apart that Wall Street was forecasting Apple might go under), John Warnock (co-founder of Adobe) got up on stage and announced Adobe’s commitment to the Mac, a move designed solely to calm investor fears. Bill Gates even announced that he’d invest his own pocket change — $125 million or so — into Apple. This helped dam up the leaking perceptual erosion that had been going on for years at Apple. Both Adobe and Microsoft helped allay market fears and give Apple the chance to reinvent themselves. They did, admirably — but at great expense to their onetime partners.
Apple learned a hard lesson in it all: They realized that their market was about what it was going to be and that the marketshare train had left the station — with Apple holding a ticket that they hadn’t cashed in when they had the chance. The outcome has been a concerted effort to lock-out anyone other than themselves from truly building anything in the Apple Orchard. If it runs on an Apple, it will come from Apple, thank you… Over the years, they have made it quite clear to many industry watchers and forecasters, that the outcome of all this will be an Apple-only universe as much as possible — at least in the world of Apple.
Placing PDF technology at the heart of OSX’s screen presentation, etc., was just another day in the office. The roses quit coming long before that…
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
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