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Performance Question
I’m running Motion 2 on a dual 2.7 Ghz G5 with 8 gigs of Ram and Tiger and I am somewhat confused and disappointed with the performance. I was genuinely surprised when I added one particle generator to the “butterfly” mov (I’m working with the Apple Pro tutorial book) and my realtime performance immediately sank to between 12 and 1 fps. I’m a total newbie to Motion but that just doesn’t seem right to me, that just one element with one particle generator and NOTHING else open should slow that computer down so much. Prior to yesterday this was the fastest, best equipped Mac on the market. So I loaded a couple of widgets, during playback my CPU can run as high as 95% but my Ram never moved at all… it just stayed at 17% no matter what. Is there something wrong here or were my expectation too high?
Hanx,
Chad -
7 Replies
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The video card has the biggest overall impact on Motion’s performance. Did you get the upgrade to the x800 or 6800 video card? The stock 9650 isn’t particularly good for banging on Motion.
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
No, of course not. The salesperson didn’t suggest it and it never occured to me to request an upgrade card. Now I know. Education sure is costly.
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Education isn’t costly, ignorance is.
I’m always amazed at the number of people I train on Motion who were not advised to upgrade the card, even when buying from a Video reseller.
I upgraded my dual G5 from the 9800 Pro to an x800 and it made a world of difference in Motion’s framerates. You can still bring it to its knees but not as easily.
Something else that will kill your performance is previewing float color space when working in 16- or 32-bit float color.
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
OK, live and learn. So could you possibly recommend an upgrade video card for $500 or less? We’re looking for as much “realtime” as possible for that amount of money since we’ll need three. The Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition?
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[Chad Kappeler] “Is there something wrong here or were my expectation too high?”
I appreciate what the other guys are saying with regard to the upgrading of your video card but before you spend more money, take a look at these articles and they may provide you a solution. I found them very useful as they show better how Motion handles graphics. If you are not paying attention to the way it crunches data you will run out of processor/RAM real quick. This might be what you need:
https://homepage.mac.com/specialcase/articles/sizematters.html
Brian FitzGerald
FitzVideo.com -
Drop by Radeon or Nvidia and search for Macintosh cards. Print the specs and the prices.
Return to the Motion marketing pages at apple.com and look at the suggested cards.
Easy to compare. You want 256 VRAM. Note carefully the type of output connectors as you may ned up needing adapters. The used market is going to be flush with Mac GPUs as the new beasts from both card companies start to ship.
You can do quite well for $500 but most of us don’t need to have full rez and realtime all the time. Half rez works fine for 90% of my rough work. Full rez is only necessary for RAM previews and precision. Precision, frankly, isn’t necessarily what Motion is all about; it’s about building stuff quickly in my world.bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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Check the ATI website for their x800 upgrade policy. $400 if you keep your original card, $50 rebate if you send your old card back after upgrading.
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com
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