Specs for Mac Pro using AE

[Kevin Camp]

you won’t see a huge performance boost from the new mac pro compared to the mac that you currently have. at least not from a processing viewpoint. and with a new mac pro you will also be buying 2 fairly expensive graphics cards that after effects will not make much use of…

from the sounds of it, your biggest enemy may be ram… 900 layers is a lot to hold in memory.

the new mac pro’s ssd may improve render times by giving you a significantly faster disk caching. however you could probably outfit your current mac pro with a ssd or two that could give you a similar performance boost for a fraction of the cost of a new mac pro (which isn’t really new anymore, they came out in 2013 and haven’t been updated since).

here’s alink to some benchmarks comparing a ssd upgrade for a 2009 mac pro with the ssd performance of a new mac pro:

https://barefeats.com/hard200.html

i’m not endorsing the product, i’ve not used it, but it does look promising.

i would do some more research, and hopefully others can give more input, but that’s my 2-cents.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Noah Klersfeld]

Thanks Kevin – I will look into SSD for my current system. Appreciate the advice!

[Noah Klersfeld]

Thanks Dave – I will look to boost my processors without getting a new machine. My RAM is 64G and when I am running render queue in AE it reads 8% RAM utilization at the bottom of the rendering interface. What does this mean? I am running AE5 at the moment.

[Noah Klersfeld]

Kevin – My RAM is 64G and when I am running render queue in AE it reads 8% RAM utilization at the bottom of the rendering interface. What does this mean?

[Kevin Camp]

Dave’s right about not upgrading the OS… CS5 does not work for me on Yosemite. Interestingly, CS4 does with just a few minor hiccups.

As for your RAM usage, do you have multiprocessing enabled in CS5 (preferences>memory & multiprocessing, checkmark for ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’)?

if so, what are the other settings on that panel?

if not, you may want to enable that, and here’s a few links you might want to take a look at to help with understanding the settings to get you started:

https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/using-render-multiple-frames-simultaneously-multiprocessing

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/10/please-try-recommended-memory-settings-for-after-effects-cs5-and-give-feedback.html

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2009/12/performance-tip-dont-starve-yo.html

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/03/performance-tip-dont-oversched.html

also, with your comps with 400-900 layers with masks, are those 400-900 layers typically an image sequence or are they layered together, overlapping each other in the timeline?

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Noah Klersfeld]

OK Thanks Kevin
I am running 10.6.8 so thats good.

Render Multiple Frames is enabled. From there the numbers going down the list are:
24 CPU / 10 CPU for AE / 3GB RAM per background CPU / 14 Actual CPU used.

Above that is 64G RAM / 16G RAM for other apps / 48G RAM for for AE.

The 400-900 layers overlap each other in the timeline.

Noah

[Noah Klersfeld]

thank you Dave yes CS5 and I am running 10.6.8

[Kevin Camp]

those settings seem pretty good for your machine…. i’m still surprised at the low ram usage and the slow render times.

you might open the activity monitor (applications>utilities), click the cpu tab to view processes and start a render and watch the ‘aeselflink’ processes and see how much cpu usage each is using. you would hope to see numbers over 100%, if not there may be a data bottleneck somewhere in your system (or you maybe using an effect that does not work with ‘render frames simultaneously’, there are a few).

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW