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~~ Ideal iMac setup for After Effect and FCP
Hi,
I’m an amateur when it comes to computer setups.. hoping experts here can help me out.
99% of my work is to produce animated explanation video for my company.
I use After effect to compose my animations (most of them are flat, non-3D, animations of cartoon people) Then I export all of them onto FCPX for editing
Each project is 3mins long, in 1080p.
I’m trying to see what kind of set up I should have because right now these programs LAG LIKE CRAZY after 30 mins use.
I’m editing on my macbook pro and here are the specs:
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M (1024mb)
Memory: 8GB
HD: 500 GB SSDI’m load all my AE onto my Lacie 7200RPM HDD and edit from there
Do I need to change anything? My friends are recommending the iMAC…. I have the budget but I don’t want to spend if not necessary and they might announce new iMac soon?
Advise would be greatly appreciated 🙂 thank you!
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8 Replies
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Always get the most powerful Mac you can afford. Updates always come.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training -
[Noah Kadner] “Always get the most powerful Mac you can afford. Updates always come.”
Yep… it’s the hardware Catch 22. As soon as you buy a computer, a new version appears. 😉 I usually wait for the new version, and then buy the “old” one. usually at a discount. 🙂
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
You don’t have any memory. 8GB is really a bare minimum to be opening AE and FCPX. Both programs use RAM extensively for caching assets as you go along. I’d start with maxing out the RAM.
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Thank you guys,
Do you think adding JUST ram will be enough?
If not then I might get iMac and use my macbook as 2nd render machine to double the efficiency for myself
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I guess it could work as a second machine. If you put more RAM in it. 🙂
And give 10.2 a try. RAM leaks and sluggishness is supposed to be a thing of the past. But honestly I can’t imagine trying to use AE with 8 gigs. I’m doing corporate stuff in FCP, AE and motion. 32gigs doesn’t seem like enough sometimes.
If you go iMac, get 32gigs RAM, i7, and the top GPU and you’ll be a happy camper.
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Thank you for your replies,
I shall go negotiate with my business partner about paying half the expense now >:D
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So at my facility you just said ” I’m going to go ask my wife for money.” 🙂
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You may also want to consider Thunderbolt-connected storage… if you’re using an older LaCie drive with USB 2.0 or FireWire800. Upgrading the bandwidth of your external storage will help quite a lot as well.
Doug Metz
Anode
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