confused… about ram use

[Ken Latman]

Because AE CS3 is not a 64 bit application on the Mac yet, it will only address about 4GB of RAM. Get Nucleo Pro 2 and you can use it to multi-thread the output to muliple processors which can then address more RAM.

Standard AE: 1 processor; 3.5GB of RAM
Render final movie with Nucelo Pro 2: 8 processors address 3.5 GB each, with 28GB of RAM (if at all possible) you can get a faster output[8 x 3.5 = 28].
I now have 10GB and I am seeing some improvement.
That has been my experience so far.

[Kevin Camp]

you don’t necessarily need nucle pro… if you have after effects cs3, you can enable multiprocessing (preferences>multiprocessing, check the option for render multiple framed simultaneously). this will tell ae to launch a render engine for each available processor when rendering, so you will be able to better utilize your processing power and ram.

if you uncheck the ‘use opengl’ option in preferences>preivews, and set accelerate previews to adaptive resolution you will also use multiprocessing for preview renders too.

with 8gb or ram and 4 cores, i’d leave the preferences>memory and cache settings at the defaults (120% maximum memory usage, and 60% max ram cache) or there abouts. you can enable disk cache if you can keep the disk cache on a separate drive controller than where you render to. example: set the disk cache to the main drive if you can render to an firewire or external sata drive/drive array.

there are some benefits to nucleo pro with cs3, you might go to grid iron’s site and check out some of the other features (like background rendering). if you have ae7, then nucleo or nucleo pro is a good way to go to utilize your extra processors and ram.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Anita Sancha]

Thanks most appreciated advice