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AE 7.0 renderspeed/ buying new hardware
Hi all,
This is about the best hardware for an affordable (~ $2000-2500) machine to run AE 7.0 (and Premiere 2.0, Photoshop etc., Cubase SX3, Kontakt 2).
—————1. First, my problem:
Yesterday I rendered a 12 minute DV standard resolution video with a few color corrections (levels, curves) and masks applied. It took about 15 hrs.
My machine (AMD dual core, 1GB) uses both processors but processor load was only between 2-15%.
The project files are stored and the project is rendered to a USB 2.0 Hard-disk (is this the problem?).
I would be most grateful for hints as to what went wrong?
—————2. I am about to buy a better machine; I want to use DV standard res. but may want to upgrade in one or two years to 1920p Hi-res footage (I may also upgrade to CS3 once the current install problems are solved).
* Quad core 2,4 GHz, 4 GB,
two internal 500 GB drives w/ 7200 upm,
* one external 500 GB esata drive as backup drive
* GF8800GTS, 640MB
* Win XP Professionala. Does this sound right?
b. Would it make sense to have a Raid-0 array (that is a total of 4 disks: one system disk one Raid 0 array and one backup)?
c. Do I need the fast graphics card?
d. Are there any other things I should have?
———————Thanks a lot for your help (I am an
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3 Replies
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Rendering issues are almost impossible to diagnose by remote control. Too many uncommunicated factors. Your CPU speed indicates you have an issue on your machine or OS, buying a new machine will not necessarily accomplish or improve anything, especially with DV as your output. The USB drives contribute something to the slowdown.
Graphics cards only supply a bit of acceleration generally and usually only for previews. Certain effects use OpenGL for rendering to final rez but OpenGL just doesn’t work as promised for rendering, seems to me.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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15hrs for 12mins just for levels and curves seems a bit long… if the comp is as simple as you said, the usb2.0 drive is probably not the big issue.
in ae’s memory & cache settings, is disk cache enabled? you might try turning it off if it is, if your disk is slow or fragmented it can really slow things down. you are rather handicaped by 1gb ram, so disable the disk cache can result in other problems, but for troubleshooting this, you might give it a try.
additionally, you could try a render using opengl as the render engine. both levels and curves are opengl accelerated effects. once you send your render to the queue, click the render settings and check the box for use opengl for render. now, i want to warn you a bit about opengl and ae… you will want to check the opengl render against the other render. opengl renders a little differently than ae, and there may be problems.. but if the comp is as you described, i think it should be fine.
in ae7 most effects can’t use multiple processors unless you purchase nucleo pro (gridironsoftware.com). so a new machine with more processing cores may not result in significantly better render times. cs3, however, uses multiple render engines, one for each processor, so the beneift is grater than for ae7.
additionally, i would spend money on more ram than a better graphics card, particularly if you invest in cs3 or nucleo pro for ae7 (the recomendation is 2gb per processor for multiprocessing).
a raid0 would not be as beneficial to ae as it would to an nle… it would allow capture and playout of higher data rate file types, like lossless or uncompressed, but so will your sata drive. if you get a sata ii host adapter, you could easily upgrade to a raid0 drive array when you want to go hd (in a couple of years, you could probably get a few terabytes for a hundred bucks… 😉
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
[moldyboot] “additionally, i would spend money on more ram than a better graphics card, particularly if you invest in cs3 or nucleo pro for ae7 (the recomendation is 2gb per processor for multiprocessing).”
Agreed, that said – you will only be able to use 3-3.5 GB RAM on XP Professional (if you have the full 4GB installed) Go for Vista (though not sure if it’s ready yet) or Windows x64 if you’re cramming it full of RAM.
*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0
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