AE Purchase Questions

[Walter Soyka]

[Craig Larson] “1. I have a 2011 MBP with Thunderbolt and 8gb of ram. I’m assuming this will be enough horsepower to run AE?”

AE’s performance scales with hardware. You can run AE on a MBP with 8 GB of RAM, but it’ll render a lot faster on a 6-core Mac Pro with 24 GB, and faster still on a 12-core with 48 GB.

[Craig Larson] “2. I’ve seen the software priced at around $500. Is there better pricing anywhere? Also, would it be beneficial to buy an older version off eBay and then purchase an upgrade?”

Retail for AE alone is $999.

Adobe’s SWITCH campaign is back on, getting you the entire Production Premium suite for less than the cost of AE alone.

Adobe Creative Cloud subscription licensing [link] will be available in the first half of this year, getting you the entire Creative Suite Master Collection for $50/mo. Until the new pricing plan kicks in, you can subscribe to AE alone [link] for $75/mo (month by month) or $50/mo (if you pay a whole year).

[Craig Larson] “3. What’s the best book/training/site for AE?”

If you’re new to After Effects, I’d recommend the following link, in which Adobe’s Todd Kopriva pulls together some important introductory materials:
https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/01/getting-started-with-after-eff.html

I especially recommend the Video Copilot “Basic Training” series that Todd links to.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Craig Larson]

Walter:

Thanks for taking the time to respond and the thoroughness of your answers! Looking forward to diving into AE…

Blessings,

Craig Larson
August Heat Productions
Apple Valley, MN