OpenGL ? Adaptive Resolution ?

[Kevin Camp]

i don’t believe adaptive resolution will see any beneift from a faster graphics card….

if you are looking to spend money upgrading a pc for use with ae, you’d be much better off maxing out the ram.

however, if you have already maxed the ram and you have a single processor pc, you may see some benefit with a good opengl card… there is an article here at the cow that explores opengl in ae. note that opengl does render a little differently, particularly anti-aliasing. and in my experience it does a poor job compensating for pixel aspect ration mismatches… so if you have a non-square pixel comp, and bring square pixel images in, it won’t look so good. or the other way around. so just convert your images and other elements to the pixel aspect ratio that you are working in.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i don’t believe adaptive resolution will see any benefit from a better graphics card.

if you want to upgrade the pc, you’ll get the best return for your money on ram… max it out.

if you have muliple processors or cores, you may then want to purchase nucleo ($50-150) or upgrade to ae cs3 (out very soon, and if you don’t have the pro version of 7 you’ll get it with the upgrade to cs3 free) to take better advantage of the multiple processors.

if you don’t have multiple porcessors you may benefit from an opengl 2.0 card. search the cow for an opengl article written by mylenium about a year ago. in it, he explores using opengl in ae7, and using it for previews and renders. you can also search the ae’s help for opengl effects and find a list of the accelerated effects and features to help determine how well it might benefit you. opengl does render differently than the software render engine, notably the anti-aliasing. in my experience with opengl, i found that it does a poor job compensating for pixel aspect ratio mismatches (ex: placing a square px image into a non-square px comp). so you will want to convert images (or other elements) to the pixel aspect ratio you are working in, in another pieces of software.

upgrade the ram first, then look at your processor situation… if you have a single processor, you may benift from opengl acceleration enough to make it worth while, but you will want to develop a workflow around opengl. if you have multiple processors, you may get better render speeds with nucleo or upgrading to cs3.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Efe Ozler]

But i dont think i ll be using OpenGL.

I wanna figure out ;while making a Ram preview, or scrolling in the timeline, is it the Cpu and Ram doing the whole work, or the graphics card has anything to do with it.

If it s the Cpu and Ram, i ll use an onboard Graphics Card.

Thanks a lot for the link and taking your time to answer

[Kevin Camp]

with opengl off, the cpu is doing the work and the ram is storing the rendered frames. essentially, faster cpu = faster renders; more ram = more frames stored.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Efe Ozler]

So i ll go and buy a
Core 2 Duo 2.13 ghz(4mb Cache), a motherboard with firewire,
2Gigs of Ram(800Mhz), 2 Raid Harddisks, and a 150$ Graphics Card, case,power supply, etc.

It will cost me a total of approximately ~1100$
I have more than a 100$ left on budget, but i m not sure upgrading from 2 Gigs of Ram to 4 Gigs would make a difference for me, would it ? (Windows XP)
Or does that mean 2 times more preview time?

(ashamed to take your time with such silly questions, but this is the newbie section, isn’t it? )

[Darby Edelen]

[Dave LaRonde] “necessary things like the operating system.”

…stupid selfish operating system, learn to share like your mother taught you!

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA