[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

BTW, I need to rectify something.
The correct AI command to distribute groups/objects to layers is “Release to Layers (sequence)”. Not “Release to Layers (build)”, which is more for frame-by-frame style animation (it accumulates objects in the layer stack). I just happened to be using the latter recently, and thus my mistake.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Yes, it’s extremely weird 🙁

Please do send me your configuration to the e-mail address above (so I can also attach the e-mail address to the report):
Mac Pro model
Graphics card
Mac OS version (for example, 10.5.7)
Quicktime version
RAM amount
OpenGL mode (Interactive, Always On, off)
Color Management: or or off
Render Multiple Frames Simulataneously: on or off
Preferences > Display > Harware Accelerate Compostion, layer and footage panels: on or off
Video out: on or off, and which device.

Thanks!

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Brian:
As I said in an earlier message, Adobe is aware that some users are experiencing this issue. So far I have heard this from about 6-7 users (out of hundreds of thousands!), and all of them are on 8-core Mac Pros.
Unfortunately, as I told you on our e-mail exchange, I don’t have more information to share yet.

Jens: If you want, please do send full configuration details and contact info so I can add it to the report: arozenfe(usualsign)adobe.com

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Sorry to hear about these problems.
I don’t think having all 2 GB DIMMs should make a difference.
But you could have a faulty DIMM. Those things happen.

You can try this – Remove half of the RAM (keeping the symmetric scheme you’re using). Does it hang or crash? If no, remove this half and put on the other half. Does it hang? If yes, you know the problem is in this second batch. So you can isolate it by narrowing it that way.

It can of course be something else. It’s so hard to diagnose these things remotely 🙂

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Color Management does affect RAM preview playback performance, because it has to apply a color transform on the fly. Note that AE displays a red warning in the Info panel about this.
But you’re right – such a powerful computer should be able to keep up easily, considering that lesser models can do it (sometimes it takes a couple of loops for it to achieve full frame rate). If you leave the RAM preview range looping, does it eventually play back at full frame rate?
Also, make sure the RAM preview frame rate and resolution settings are both set to “Auto”, and that view magnification and Resolution match in the Comp panel (ie, 100 per cent magnification/full resolution, 50 per cent/half, etc). As of CS4, there’s a new “auto” option in the Resolution menu, which is really handy to keep Resolution in sync when view magnification/zoom changes.

I have heard from half a dozen users with Mac Pros having similar issues with RAM previews playback. If the tips I mentioned above don’t work for you, it could also be your case. There could be a very specific issue with a specific configuration. We’re trying to find out.

When you say “no video card installed”, do you mean a video I/O card (Decklink, AJA, etc) or a display card (Nvidia, ATI)?

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

I understand the problem you’re experiencing 🙂
When you apply the “Release to layers (build)” command, AI creates nested sublayers in the main layer, instead of layers. And AE needs top level layers in order to separate them as such when importing an AI file as Composition. You’d have to select all the resulting sublayers and drag them up and out from the layer which contains them. This works perfectly, but it is cumbersome when you have a lot of sublayers.

So much so that, about a year ago I requested in the Adobe AI scripting forum if someone could write a script to automate this (turning AI sublayers into top level layers without having to drag them out manually). And in fact scripting guru JETalmage wrote such a script:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/287812

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

It is a Mac Pro, right? There’s no 8-core G5 🙂

Assuming you have “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” turned on in Preferences > Memory and Multiprocessing, I’d start by setting “CPUs to leave for other applications” in the same tab to 4. You need at least 2 GB per core for this feature to do any good. Since you don’t have enough RAM to feed all 8 cores, I would start by trying with 4, to be on the safe side (HD Comps, large image sizes and high-bit depth projects may require even more memory than stated above).

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Copying and pasting paths from AI doesn’t bring appearance attributes (fill, stroke, etc). In fact, copying and pasting paths also works from Photoshop and other Adobe applications which don’t have these attributes.

You can get AI artwork with appearances when you import such file, rather than paste paths from AI.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

If you duplicate a Comp in the project panel, it is automatically independent from the original. If you duplicate a nested Comp in the timeline, it’s just an instance of the same Comp.

For footage items, if you apply the Replace command, all instances are changed. But if you select the layer you want to replace, and option/alt-drag from the project panel to that specific layer, only that specific instance gets its’ source changed.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

It used to be true that ProRes files could only be opened if you had FCS, Dave. It’s not a mistake what you said. The free ProRes decoders for Mac and Win were introduced recently.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe