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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects unimpressed w/ G5???

  • unimpressed w/ G5???

    Posted by Alisa Placas on April 4, 2005 at 1:40 pm

    I just upgraded from a 1.25 G4 to a 2.5 G5 with 2GB of RAM.
    I bought the new computer now (right before NAB) because I have an HD project underway and was greatly in need of some more processing power.
    I was under the impression that the 2.5 G5 was the only thing that could handle HD work. Thus far, I am unimpressed.

    I have a Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro card running to an Ikegami HD monitor. Supposedly, I should be able to RAM preview some of my AE comps realtime to this monitor. I can’t. It completely chokes and stutters through the playback.
    I can get a good ‘idea’ of what my comp looks in HD, but nothing reliable.
    I have it set to RAM preview, not to disk cache.

    I have also had problems with rendering. I’ll leave overnight renders and invariably, AE will just get ‘stuck’ on one of them….spinning and spinning its wheels, saying it’s been rendering for 20 minutes, when 7 hours have passed. I have to quit the render in the morning, the whole night wasted.

    choke choke choke. Is it AE that can’t handle HD or is it the G5???
    Is 2GB RAM simply not enough? If not, how much IS enough? In my render que, it is telling me that it is only using between 6%-15% of the available RAM, so it doesn’t seem like a RAM issue. Are my settings wrong somewhere, perhaps?

    And I must add that these compositions are STRIPPED. I’ve taken out every complex filter I can and am almost down to ‘fast blurs’ only. I’ve eliminated my cameras and lights and replicated their effects in 2D. I’ve even removed most of my masked overlay layers by importing feathered mask layers from Photoshop so that AE doesn’t have to compute the mask for each frame.
    I am trying to make some interesting looking graphics, but feel that all my tools have been taken away.

    Are other people having these problems or am I doing something wrong on my end?

    Alisa Placas
    Lucid Animation
    Cambridge, MA

    Miller replied 19 years, 10 months ago 6 Members · 17 Replies
  • 17 Replies
  • Steve Roberts

    April 4, 2005 at 2:27 pm

    I just made an HD comp, tossed in Particular, a light, a camera, and a bunch of big stills (1Kx2K). The full-quality, full frame rate RAM preview seems to be playing back fine … once it finishes rendering to RAM. (G5 v.2, dual 2, 2.5GB RAM)

    Have you tried upgrading to 6.5.1? Apparently, it should fix spinning “beach ball of death” (BBOD) issues.
    Do you have anything else running, such as iTunes?

    Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
    Steve

  • Michael Del rossi

    April 4, 2005 at 2:39 pm

    I do film res comps with effects and particles etc

  • Alisa Placas

    April 4, 2005 at 4:11 pm

    I am running 10.3.8

    Memory:
    Slot 1: 256MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
    Slot 2: 256MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
    Slot 3: 256MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
    Slot 4: 256MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
    Slot 5: 512MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
    Slot 6: 512MB DDR SDRAM PC3200

    ATA Bus
    Maxtor 160MB Macintosh HD
    ATA Bus
    Maxtor 250MB internal drive

    I have the ATI Radeon 9800 XT
    and also a Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro card

    I ran the hardware tests off the disk. I also repaired disk permissions and repaired disk off the start up CD. I removed my AE preferences.

    I attempted to update to AE 6.5.1, but the installer gives me an error message with no suggestions as to what went wrong. I’ve tried downloading the updater from several web locations and they all give me the same error. very disturbing….I was quite excited to find out there was an update to 6.5.
    It says it solves some of the spinning circle issues, but that does me no good if I can’t install it.

    I’m going to upload a sample project. I’ll give directions to the location as soon as it is up.
    Thanks for the help!

    Alisa Placas
    Lucid Animation
    Cambridge, MA

  • Steve Roberts

    April 4, 2005 at 4:29 pm

    As for installing 6.5.1, it’ll give you an error if your AE install isn’t in the default directory. Try moving the AE install there, then install the update, then move AE back to where it was.

    Let us know …
    Steve

  • Alisa Placas

    April 4, 2005 at 4:52 pm

    After Effects is in
    Machintosh HD — Applications folder
    Should it be somewhere else?

    Do you mean where the 6.5.1 Updater is located?
    I tried updating it with the 6.5.1 Updater on the desktop, after I placed it in the Applications folder and also after I tried putting it in the AE 6.5 folder.
    All three attempts gave me the same error.

    thank you.

    Alisa Placas
    Lucid Animation
    Cambridge, MA

  • Alisa Placas

    April 4, 2005 at 7:34 pm

    There is an example of what I am doing on my server.

    Download:
    https://webftp.powweb.com/?action=logout

    hostname: terra.powweb.com
    username: alisagraphics
    password: graphics

    In the ‘test’ folder.

    I am wondering how many of my problems might be solved by updating to 6.5.1 though.
    If only I could get the updater to work!

    Alisa Placas
    Lucid Animation
    Cambridge, MA

  • Michael Del rossi

    April 4, 2005 at 7:42 pm

    I’m downloading the files now .
    by the way do you have admin privileges?
    check if you can write to the AE folder and application.
    mdr

  • Michael Del rossi

    April 4, 2005 at 8:06 pm

    54 meg files?????
    whoa you don’t need that much resolution.
    Don’t mask or roughen edges to the journal, AE is re calculating the mask and the roughen edges every frame , also turn off motion blur until you render or just put it on to check frames every now and then.
    It’s always best to prep your files in Photoshop don’t use layers unless you really need them (if you wanted the letters to fade in).
    good luck
    mdr

  • Alisa Placas

    April 4, 2005 at 8:52 pm

    Thanks for checking it out.
    I am currently in the process of going through the whole project and fixing such things as you mentioned…..getting rid of as many masks and effects as I can.
    I do only have motion blur on when I render. I’ve been trying to render some of these, but they get stuck often overnight.
    Even so….it is frustrating that in HD, it feels like I am back in AE 5.0, trying to render an SD camera move on a G4 450. choke

    I guess my quest at the moment is to figure out why I can’t update my 6.5 to 6.5.1.

    Alisa Placas
    Lucid Animation
    Cambridge, MA

  • Michael Del rossi

    April 4, 2005 at 9:13 pm

    I currently have 3 gigs of ram and find that sufficient.
    Do you know at which frame it gets stuck? you might want to check that frame in the timeline.
    as for why you can’t install the upgrade you might have to reinstall the Original Application.
    And yes both AE and The G5 can handle HD. I did an theater commercial with 6 AD’s breathing down my neck and all went well. use lower resolution settings to start and when you have the basics and need to tweak, then up the resolution( not the size of the frame the resolution).
    good luck
    mdr

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