AE CS3 on a Macbook? (NOT Macbook Pro)

[Ken Latman]

Since some people on this board have reported using AE CS3 on a iMac, I don’t see why not. I have it running on my MacBook and I have the same machine you do. I would upgrade your RAM to the full extent. You should be able to make it a 4GB machine. I picked up mine pretty cheap at Other World Computing.
Just watch out for particle system type effects. These could be taxing on your system.

[Patrick Heneghan]

Thanks Ken,

I’m pretty sure I bought it with it’s maximum RAM, and that was 2GB. I bought it end of last summer. I could be wrong though, so I’ll check.

[Keith Hamilton]

I’m currently running AE CS3 and CS3 Web Premium Bundle on my 20″ iMac G5 with 2 Gigs of RAM that I bought in 2005. It’s my home computer that I use for occasional freelance work, and so far, I would say that AE CS3 runs fairly comfortably, depending on the complexity of the project.

I just completed some VFX work for a short film and built a graphics heavy Web site for the film on that machine. I didn’t have anywhere near the performance of my work machine (2 x 2.66 GHz Dual Core Xeon with 8 GB RAM), of course, but the project went rather smoothly. (Go to http://www.masterpiece.com to see the site and the film. Web site, VFX, and Flash encoding were all done on my home iMac.)

——————————
H. Keith Hamilton
Fellowship Bible Church (Day Job)
SkyGate Studios (Freelance)
kham4002@mac.com

http://www.skygatestudios.com

[Tom Ma]

I am having some trouble doing heavy duty AE work on my MacBook.
Heat seems to be an issue.
I have 2 GB RAM.
When I work in AE, no problem (so you may be fine)
But if I try to render a very heavy, processor intensive comp, it heats up to the point where the MacBook just shuts off!
Scary. I guess the MacBook has a heat shutoff temp.

[Mike Roberts]

Hey,

Writing to say that I’ve been animating in After Effects on a Macbook (black 2.16 2gb ram) since the fall using CS3, and while it takes longer than I’d like to render in HD, I’ve made 4 HD animated short films using a mixture of Painter, Photoshop and illustrator art, on tight deadlines without a single problem. It’s been a fantastic little machine. Heat was never a problem for me, and it only got a touch angry, and got really bogged down, if you tried to do too much while it was rendering.

I just upgraded to a macbook pro, but only because the Video card makes working on a portable so much faster.

So as long as rendering in HD in a hurry isn’t super important, I say go for it.

[David Stem]

Mike… I’m currently on a Macbook and looking to upgrade to a Macbook Pro. I’m wondering what kind of change in speed you got when you upgraded — how significant it was, etc…

Also, what Macbook Pro did you buy?

I’d love to hear from anyone else who’s running AE CS3 on a Macbook Pro.

The model I’m looking at would have 4 gb Ram + the latest video card (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB)… so I’m guessing I’d see quite an improvement with that over my 2 year old Macbook.

Thanks in advance.

[Mike Roberts]

Sorry I didn’t see this sooner David.

I’m currently on a first gen unibody – 2.53 15inch (core duo) with 4Gigs…

I’m running CS4 mostly after effects photoshop and illustrator… It runs great. I’m sure there are faster render times with a Mac Pro, but I’ve now done a bunch of HD animation without any real problems. CS4 is much easier to set-up for memory usage.

However – the discrete card is a MUST… Otherwise, you’re right back in the laggy territory of the macbook.

I say go for it. I can work anywhere in the world!