How does CS3 impact your system so far

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Lowtech:
Valid concern, of course.
But consider that AE, PPro, Photoshop and Soundbooth all have gone through not only the usual private beta testing, but also through massive public preview programs, with thousand and thousands of users hitting them hard. Most of the issues that could have been floating around were addressed.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Jeff Bernstein]

Except for OpenGL support on the Mac.

Jeff Bernstein

Digital Desktop Consulting
Apple Pro Video VAR
XSAN Certified

323-653-7611

[Jeff Bernstein]

Also keep in mind that most third party plug-ins have not been updated for CS3 and Universal Binary.

Jeff Bernstein

Digital Desktop Consulting
Apple Pro Video VAR
XSAN Certified

323-653-7611

[Craig Wall]

I respect the wisdom of waiting until a project is complete. There are ALWAYS gotchas in a migration like this. After Effects isn’t like MS Word or some other self-contained app.

We would all agree-it’s a complete eco-system.

I have been using the beta and I should get my full version tomorrow or the next day (I know they hit my debit card last week)…but I fully anticipate bouncing between versions until all my third-party plugins are updated.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Are there any gotchas on CS3 for Windows machines (plugins, etc)?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

OpenGL on the Mac is temporarily disabled on Mac because of an OS issue. The 10.4.10 update has the needed fixes, so hopefully it will be enabled again soon.

Many plug-ins are UB already (Zaxwerks, RE:Vision and a few more). Others will be very, very soon (Trapcode, Digital Anarchy).

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Virtual Light]

I’ve been using a MacPro 8-core and 16gb of ram with AE since the beta was first made available. Although I would never recommend changing versions in midstream, I had little problem opening v7 projects with one exception. In that case the camera views went wild. It was only a ‘curiosity’ check because it was a wildly complex project, but if I HAD to use CS3 it would’ve been a nightmare. I never erase previous versions due to just this kind of problem and the inevitable plug-in incompatibilities.

As far impacting my system–WOW. Having the software use all 8-cores is a sea change in the way I work as is the 8-fold increase in rendering. This would be reason enough to upgrade but there is a very impressive feature set also.

Jim

[Matt Larson]

I have been waiting for plug ins to be updated before I move the Mac Pro into the main edit sute, but here’s something I’ve used to make due in the meantime:

I duplicated the AE CS3 application and renamed it “AE CS3 Rosetta”. Then I went into the Get INfo box and Checked “Open with Rosetta”. When you do that, all of your PPC plugins should work like normal.

I haven’t used this on a daily basis but it works well enough for me to get by until the new updates are out. Using AE CS3 in Rosetta is still faster than using AE 7 on my dual G5!

[Virtual Light]

That’s a great idea. Is CS3 as stable running under Rosetta as 7 was running native? Also, do all the CS3 features still work?

Jim

[Matt Larson]

Yeah, it seems completely fine. I have not tried multiprocessor rendering under Rosetta though, it might work, I just haven’t tried it.

The only gotcha is if you have Color Finese (and maybe some other plugins too) it doesn’t want to work in Rosetta. Usually I would do what I needed to with a plug in, precomp it and render it as a proxy using the best settings. Then I Save and Close the project and the Rosetta AE version. Then open the project file back in the regular CS3 and continue to work. You will get an error message about not having the right plug in installed, but it doesn’t matter since it’s pre-rendered.