Open GL disapeared After System Upgrade OSX

[Kevin Camp]

which osx version are you using, it may help in trouble shooting this…

[David Chaudoir] ” I was unable to export Quicktimes with Sorenson 3 compression”

it sounded like the sorenson3 issue was fixed, but if not, i think there is a setting in quicktime for use legacy codecs (or something like that) that may work in this situation.

[David Chaudoir] “After Effects 7 and an older version of Illustrator would not open”

my first thought on would be to reinstall ae7 and the ai that are not working, but you might try running the disk utility (applications>utilities) and repair permissions and run check disk first. they may help, and are faster than reinstalling software….

[David Chaudoir] “in AE8 (CS3) the Open GL button is not available now when I click on the icon in the work space it says: “Vendor: No Compatible Open GL video card found. Renderer: The Graphics driver may require an update. Version: Open GL version 1.5 or Greater required.””

you might try reinstalling the latest ae cs3 update (v8.0.2) to see if that gets your opengl back. you also might try running the apple software update again, sometimes there are more pieces to update after updating…. did that make sense?? anyway i’ve noticed that after setting up a new system, i may need to run the software update a couple of times before it doesn’t find anything else to update….

now is it worth trying to get opengl back… probably not for cs3 if you have multiprocessing enabled. opengl rendering and multiprocessing are not compatible–you can’t use them both at the same time, opengl will get used over multiprocessing if they are both enabled. the 4 cores you have will probably out perform opengl acceleration for previews, so you might just disable opengl in the previews preference in favor of adaptive resolution and use all 4 cores for previews.

if you can’t get ae7 to work, you can probably get those effects to work in cs3, but you will need to set cs3 to run using rosetta (powerpc emulation) just like ae7 does. try putting the effects into the cs3 plugins (or putting aliases of those effects/effect folders in the cs3 plugins). then select the cs3 app, and choose file>get info, then check the box that says something like ‘open using rosetta’. you should gain access to access to the powerpc effects that you had in ae7.

note that cs3 may not run as smoothly under rosetta (much liek ae7), it does have it’s own pref file so you can tweak the settings to see if you can get it to work more smoothly (disable opengl right off the bat), but i would plan on working in cs3 under rosetta on a regular basis.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[David Chaudoir]

Hi Dave

In yourpost you suggest: I think you’re far better off using AE’s multiprocessing capabilities, if you have enough RAM to make it worthwhile.

How does one do this?
I have my RAM set to 30% which is supposed to be the fastest configuration (I read it in a post on here some time ago).

I have 6GB of RAM – and my independent Apple supplier reckoned if the project file is in the Raid disk and I rendered to the HD this is the speediest way of rendering. (Or is this advice the equivalent of sending out the apprentice carpenter to buy a glass hammer?)

Thanks.

David

[Kevin Camp]

the 30% max ram usage setting was specific to using ae7 on an intel mac… and some what specific to having about 2 gb of physical ram.

for cs3 (running native intel version), you’d be better off with the default settings (max ram usage 120%, max ram cache 60%). i’ve read about a 2gb per core sweet spot for ae, and i’ve tested it to some degree. what i’ve found is that i can get about the same render speeds limiting the number of cores to the a ratio of 1 cpu to 2gb of ram as i get using all the cores to render. if you want to limit the number of cores available to cs3, do this:

1. Quit After Effects.
2. Open the After Effects text preferences file, Adobe After Effects 8.0 Prefs.txt, located in the following folder:
   Mac OS: Users//Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/8.0
   Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Adobe\After Effects\8.0
   Windows Vista: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\8.0

3. Find the [‘MP’] section.
4. Change the “MaxNumberOfProcesses” value to “[gb of ram divided by 2]”.
5. Save and close the preferences file.

then open ae, make sure that multiprocessing is enabled (preferences>multiprocessing) and you cache settings are closer to the default values (disk cache is fine to have on, you’ll get better performance if the disc cache is set to a drive other than your media raid).

this should give you 3 cores for rendering multiple frames simultaneously, each with 2gb of ram, and on core to aid in rendering multithreaded effects, or for other applications/background processes. if you open the activity monitor (application>utilities) while rendering, you should notice that the aeselflink processes are usually getting over 100% cpu usage. the extra power is from that extra core that can be used as needed.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW