[George Loch]

I was also looking for eSata options on my MBP and I took a cheap gamble on an Express34 card from Bytecc and it is working really well. It only cost $37 from Newegg.com and has been working well ever since. I am pretty sure it is Sata 150 and not Sata 300 but at this point it matters little as the MBPs seem to be hindered in over throughput from Express34 anyway. Unfortuantely, Newegg seems to have deactivated it on their website so I am not sure where else you can get it but you may want to check with their site:

https://www.byteccusa.com/product/xP-card/bt-eces2.htm

For enclosures, I went with the macsales.com options. I ended up with the Mercury Elite Pro which holds two drives and it is also working really well. All in all, the setup was really cheap and works beyond the expectation considering the price.

-gl

[George Loch]

[paolom] “it seems that AE is almost a requirement”

Yes, to a certain extent. It really depends on what you sell yourself as. If you are focused on motion design then you better be an AE guru. If you are an editor with the ability to jump into AE then that is a good skill to have. However, knowing how to use AE is not enough in my opinion, you need some desing principles behind it to be really effective with it.

-gl

[George Loch]

The MacPro is very competitive with high-end PC workstations so it’s more an issue of preference. Granted, AE does not run natively on the MacPro at the moment but that will change soon. Also, consider the cost of transferring platforms in terms of replacing software.

I personally run AE in Windows but on my MBP via Bootcamp. When we get a UB version for the mac I will switch back over with pleasure 🙂

-gl

[George Loch]

If it is an Intel core duo based mini, then you are looking at $650 + tax at least (refurb). That will only be 512 ram however and even when you are running AE natively it likes the ram. However, Rosetta operates much more efficiently (tolerably) with more memory so, I would say that you need 1 gig at a minimum. If you add another $100 to that base price and tax, you would have (2) mac minis for around $1,500 total expense that would still be less rendering power than a single Mac Pro as the networking rendering adds overhead that translates into slower rendering times not to mention just slower clock speeds and architecture.

Honestly, I have often thought a rendering farm would be useful for a number of my apps (Maya, FCS, AE, etc) so I am right there with you. What I have found though is that it would be more of a productivity boost (alleviating my main workstation from mundane rendering tasks) than real acceleration AND/OR a cost savings. It’s either going to be more productive, faster rendering or a cheaper alternative – not all at the same time 🙂

-gl

[George Loch]

There are some who have published their experiences with AE render farms. Generally, it seems that they sort of payoff but not as directly as you would think. At this point, it may important to see what Adobe is going to do with version 8. We do know that they will be bringing intel-compatibility to it but, I am guessing there will be more than that.

Now, one thing to consider is the cost effectiveness of even a mac mini farm. You are looking at at least $700/mini at a minimum with $1k being more realistic with ram and storage. A Mac pro can be had for $2k on up and will probably render a couple of minis into the ground. This is just my view of it.

-gl

[George Loch]

Actually, I have found the compression options to be better quality outside of AE anyway so, I am not sure why you would want to go directly from AE to Mpeg2 when you will get better quality from a dedicated encoder.

“right tool…” idea.

-gl

[George Loch]

I think that the concept of “No way” has been shared here in a bout every way allowed on the forums 🙂 One thing I should add , however, is that Vista is very much a consumer OS right now. It’s not for hard-core anything – even the gamers are getting slighted. If you just want a system for typing email, surfing the web and playing with digiphotos then it will work really well. If you want to do *any* production work, it’s just not there yet.

-gl

[George Loch]

Not that fresh 🙂

I just want a fresh FCS install. I can’t seem to track down all the prefs et all.

-gl

[George Loch]

You can export to QT from Vegas but, perhaps not from version 4. MAybe it’s a good incentive to upgrade to 7 🙂

However, I have also had success in dropping DV AVIs on the timeline in FCP so you could try that as well.

-gl

[George Loch]

There it is. It’s a good day in mac land 🙂

-gl