Nucleo is down to $49 – best plugin ever (of course, next to Shine…) ;)

[Kevin Camp]

has anybody heard any rumors about adobe acquiring nucleo…

i haven’t, and i don’t want to start a false rumor, but i’ve seen plenty of other software packages go on sale and then end up as a standard part of another piece of software. especially when the software package only works with that one specific piece of software.

again, i’m not trying to start a rumor, and i think nucleo and nucleo pro are great additions to ae, but it does seem a little suspicious to me. but i must admit, nucleo included in a future ae won’t help me now, and nucleo for $49 would.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Brian Charles]

I own Nucleo Pro and wouldn’t want to work without it.

That said, Nucleo is of limited use, particularly since Lloyd Alvarez released the Background render script.

[Jason Jenkins]

I tried the Nucleo Pro demo on my Mac Pro 2.66 (running Windows) and it only increased my flat out render speed by about 10%. Maybe I did something wrong, but I was pretty disappointed.

[Deleted User]

Hello,

I tired Nucleo Pro with my After Effects 7.0 Pro on my Dual Core AMD 4400+ and I did not see any render improvement it actually seemed a bit slower then normal renders.

Maybe I had the wrong settings as well?

Leo

[Jason Jenkins]

Yeah, I was expecting it to peg out all four cores and really go to town, but no…

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Nucleo’s one big weakness is Illustrator files. If you were using Illustrator artwork, it can actually hinder performance. But that aside, my experience with Nucleo was great. Of course I have Nucleo Pro, which has tools that are definately worth the money – such as background render while you work.

You do need a lot of RAM, and in fact, I am purchasing my next computer based around what would best serve the uses of AE with Nucleo Pro.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com

—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911

[Joe Moya]

Curious…

Why not just wait for Vista 64k to be accomodated by Adobe and the various MS drivers?

I used Avid Pinnacle with filterd HD files and the render time is waaay faster than AE… which tells me the render engine in AE could be improved …but I just wonder when 64K (i.e., 64k compiled AE) gets into full swing, if Neuclo would be necessary?

Joe

[David Modijefsky]

Could it be that Gridiron is rewriting the software in order to let it run on the expected new 8core MacPro? Just guessing.

[Gavinvvi]

Could be. After Effects is in need of several things that third-party companies are providing.

Again, $49. Can’t go wrong for that.

– g

[Steve Forde]

OK – so I’m going to try and respond to all questions in one post…here it goes…

1. Adobe did NOT buy Nucleo. If they did, it would be illegal for us to sell it.

2. Speed. There are several factors beyond Nucleo that could cause a slowdown.

A – System Requirements. Does your system have the right hardware. (As in, RAM-RAM and More RAM). IF So – is the hardware available to AE and Nucleo? (i.e. – Is Photoshop, Final Cut, iTunes, Mail, Avid, Illustrator currently open and eating up all your system RAM?) This is usually the main culprit for poor system performance. The key to remember is – if there is not enough RAM for Nucleo to use – the first symptom is – poor CPU usage. (key point is – download demo projects from https://tinyurl.com/3937ao and test. IF there is no speedup with those – there is something wrong with your system)

B – Projects. Most but not all projects can be sped up by Nucleo. Key thing to remember – does the render actually need CPU? Many users do basic things that are really not CPU bound problems. In other words – if there is no “rendering” to be done – but perhaps significant “encoding” (making the movie format) to be done – then Nucleo will provide little benefit, as AE is not really working hard in this case.

Another case is temporally dependent effects. Plugins like Twixtor require information from frames across the timeline. In this situation, Nucleo will provide NO speedup.

C – Optimized effects. Some effects (not many) are already multi-CPU aware. If there is no CPU left to use, then Nucleo cannot go “faster” as all CPU is already in use.

D – Network footage. If you use footage that is on a network, yet your network is slow, please remember that your project will be opened X times (depending on number of processors) by the background AE processes. On a slow network, you will probably get slow results.

I think you get my point – Nucleo will eat your system. It needs everything you can throw at it to provide fast results. Nucleo Pro on the other hand is focused on being a little more friendly to your system, and will “play nice” with other applications and substandard system requirements.

3. 64bit and 8 CPU’s.

First off – Nucleo Pro and Nucleo will use up to 16 CPU’s as is. We designed it that way. Keep in mind that you would need around 32GB of RAM to use all 16. Also keep in mind how expensive 32GB of RAM would be.

64bit – Nucleo Pro and Nucleo can already address large amounts of memory. 64bit computing is all about memory addressing, and has nothing to do with speed of CPU. There is benefit in CPU / RAM interaction (which can sometimes lead to speed improvement), but not in the literal way that you suggest.

4. The price drop –

We dropped the price for a very simple reason. We have made a lot of money with Nucleo (A sincere THANK YOU). Plain and simple. I won’t cloud it with PR and diplomatic marketing speak.

We strongly feel that the Nucleo user experience gets dramatically better with Nucleo Pro. If we can get more people to have a positive experience with Nucleo (by making it super cheap), then they might upgrade to Nucleo Pro (making us more money – why we are a business).

I can’t get anymore honest than that. We want Nucleo users to upgrade to Nucleo Pro. We believe the value of Nucleo Pro to AE use is far beyond the original Nucleo.

There you have it – straight from the horses mouth (although I have a bigger nose than mouth).

Steve Forde – CEO
GridIron Software Inc.