Mac Pro Extremly Slow, need help w/pref. to get best performance

[Martin Jordan]

BTW my Graphics Card is a ATI Radeon X1900.

Dual Core, 3GHz, OS 10.5.7, 16GB Ram, 2 TB internal HD, 4TB External Raid, MacBook Pro (MBP) 2.6 GHz, Dual Core, 10.5.7, FCP 6.0.5, Sound Track Pro, AE 9.0.2, Squeeze for the Web…HPX300 Camera.
Owner of Full Graphics Design Firm Houston, Tx 19 yrs.
Mac user since 1988.

[David Bogie]

You basically start with the manual on page 1 and move ahead. It’s not the machine itself. You could have all kinds of Macintosh-related issues going on, impossible to tell from where I sit. Do any other applications show symptoms? If not, your install is botched but that’s so unlikely if you know how to run a Mac.

Welcome to the family.

Most AE problems are solved by understanding the order of operations and knowing that the installation was done properly. I’ve been using AE since v1, never had your issue show up personally but wee see similar posts often. Usually end up being simple user errors or weirdly corrupted expectations.

I’ve never used your camera but be sure the media is in a form QT can use without decompressing on the fly. HDV is bad.

bogiesan

[Todd Kopriva]

I don’t know that any of the items in the “Improve performance” section of After Effects Help will address your specific issues, but it may be worth a look.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Martin Jordan]

Well I think after using MAC’s work stations since 1988 we know how to run MACs. It’s just sometimes certain applications, like certain things enabled or disabled to run optimized…usually in pref’s. Like Open GL ON/OFF, software/hardware usage, amount of RAM allocated etc.

And usually, manuals aren’t very helpful with, in field tips on issues like this. At least that’s been our experience.

No other app’s show symptoms. Our work stations run great. But AE really seems to suffer especially, when importing a 3D file from PS.

I thought maybe it was some as you said, “simple user errors” that we might be doing and was looking for some advice on what we might be doing wrong.

Thanks for the comments anyway.

Dual Core, 3GHz, OS 10.5.7, 16GB Ram, 2 TB internal HD, ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card, 4TB External Raid, FCP 6.0.5, Sound Track Pro, AE 9.0.2, Squeeze for the Web, MacBook Pro (MBP) 2.6 GHz, Dual Core, 10.5.7, Panasonic HPX300 Camera.
Owner of Full Graphics Design Firm Houston, Tx 19 yrs.
Mac user since 1988.

[Martin Jordan]

Thanks Todd I’ll take a look.

Dual Core, 3GHz, OS 10.5.7, 16GB Ram, 2 TB internal HD, ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card, 4TB External Raid, FCP 6.0.5, Sound Track Pro, AE 9.0.2, Squeeze for the Web, MacBook Pro (MBP) 2.6 GHz, Dual Core, 10.5.7, Panasonic HPX300 Camera.
Owner of Full Graphics Design Firm Houston, Tx 19 yrs.
Mac user since 1988.

[Martin Jordan]

Hey Todd,

That Link to performance tips was EXACTLY what we were looking for.

Thanks

Dual Core, 3GHz, OS 10.5.7, 16GB Ram, 2 TB internal HD, ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card, 4TB External Raid, FCP 6.0.5, Sound Track Pro, AE 9.0.2, Squeeze for the Web, MacBook Pro (MBP) 2.6 GHz, Dual Core, 10.5.7, Panasonic HPX300 Camera.
Owner of Full Graphics Design Firm Houston, Tx 19 yrs.
Mac user since 1988.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

[Martin Jordan] And usually, manuals aren’t very helpful with, in field tips on issues like this. At least that’s been our experience.

Historically, I would have agreed with you Martin.
But in recent years, the After Effects manual experimented a revolutionary change, to become a community-driven, user-focused resource. And it’s full of tips and tricks. Also, if you search Community help for a given topic, you’re not going to find just topics from the manual, but a lot of other web resources are indexed as well.

[Martin Jordan] But AE really seems to suffer especially, when importing a 3D file from PS.

Martin, if you are familiar with 3D apps, you know that usually they work in a draft rendering mode (Gouraud shading, for example). And they work this way because rendering a 3D frame with higher quality can usually take from 30 seconds to 10 minutes for wildly sophisticated options like Global Illumination. And the PS renderer really supports these advanced rendering options.

So, when you take a PS 3D file to AE is no different, except that AE honors the render settings for the 3D layer in the PSD file. The workflow I would recommend is going to the 3D render settings in PS, choose a very fast/draft-like setting (and turn off expensive options like Refraction/Reflection), import the PSD with Live 3D in AE to set the overall animation, then “Edit original” to go back to PS, switch to a higher-quality rendering mode/options, save the file and see it update in AE.

You can do this as many times as you wish, and provided you invoke Photoshop with the “Edit original” command, you’ll always see the results immediately updated in AE. This, as a workaround for not having direct access to PS 3D render settings from within AE.

[Martin Jordan] I thought maybe it was some as you said, “simple user errors” that we might be doing and was looking for some advice on what we might be doing wrong.

I wouldn’t call this user error. It’s more about finding a workflow for a feature that it’s extremely intensive in processing load, as it is everywhere else (but with no direct controls to switch to draft render mode).

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Martin Jordan]

Well, the link Todd gave me on performance was a huge help and yes now I agree. The help desk and info. that I see now from Adobe is MUCH better, MUCH, MUCH better than in the past and most other companies. I love the addition of Adobe TV. With the sophisticated type of software that we all use today this is a welcomed customer service value added service. I wish Adobe TV was just a little bit more organized though, in being able to find the exact group of video’s you need.

But your right, now that I’ve been pointed in the right direction AE seems to have very good documentation.

Dual Core, 3GHz, OS 10.5.7, 16GB Ram, 2 TB internal HD, ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card, 4TB External Raid, FCP 6.0.5, Sound Track Pro, AE 9.0.2, Squeeze for the Web, MacBook Pro (MBP) 2.6 GHz, Dual Core, 10.5.7, Panasonic HPX300 Camera.
Owner of Full Graphics Design Firm Houston, Tx 19 yrs.
Mac user since 1988.

[Todd Kopriva]

> Well, the link Todd gave me on performance was a huge help and yes now I agree. The help desk and info. that I see now from Adobe is MUCH better, MUCH, MUCH better than in the past and most other companies. I love the addition of Adobe TV. With the sophisticated type of software that we all use today this is a welcomed customer service value added service…. But your right, now that I’ve been pointed in the right direction AE seems to have very good documentation.

Hooray! Now go and tell all of your friends who’ve been avoiding using After Effects Help and After Effects Community Help search because they didn’t see the point. 😉

> I wish Adobe TV was just a little bit more organized though, in being able to find the exact group of video’s you need.

I agree. That’s why I cataloged the After Effects videos in Adobe TV and Video Workshop here: “Video tutorials: getting started, new features, and common procedures”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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