[Graham Jones]

Hi Andrew,

thanks for your post. “Rosetta” is the tool that Intel Macs use to run non-Intel native programs, like AE. It’s incredibly versatile, but there is always a cost to running an emulation environment. If you open the Activity Monitor application (inside Applications>Utilities), you will see some processes that are listed as “Intel” and some as “PowerPC.” Rosetta runs all of the apps and processes that are not “Intel,” and they all share a limited amount of your memory— it seems to be about 40-45% of your total RAM, but there may be other factors.

I think that 1GB is probably too low to do anything but the most basic work in AE 7 on an Intel Mac. Doing a Kaleidoscope on Illustrator vectors is not “simple” when it comes to how much memory it needs.

The best way to test this is to use Activity Monitor to quit any processes that are not Intel (Select each “PowerPC” process and use the “Force Quit” button). Then go to AE and lower your memory settings to something like 10%. Also make sure you have done all of the other things I mentioned at the top of this thread. If it still crashes, you likely need more memory.

It may be enlightening to keep Activity Monitor running while you are working with AE, to get an idea on what sucks more memory, and what is happening when it crashes.

Hope this helps,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Thanks for your post… I suggest you make use of the excellent After Effects searchable online help, and also reading the manual wouldn’t hurt. Try “memory” for a search term. After Effects is a pro program, and you will get a LOT more out of it if you learn the basics the right way, and make use of the right resources when you encounter a problem.

That said:

Under After Effects>Preferences>Memory & Cache… you see the

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Under After Effects>Preferences>Memory & Cache… On this window, you see the

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Sorry, don’t know about the texture maps… I think trial and error will have to do. It’s a good sign that the Rosetta memory limit seems proportional to the total RAM— adding more memory is again a good recommendation.

As for OpenGL, some users have reported issues with it… Can you afford to keep it off? I know… would be a shame with your killer graphics card. I don’t have any experience with Invigorator… perhaps Zaxwerks’s support department might be able to help.

Can anyone else cast some light on these issues?

Thanks,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Thanks for posting. It’s a little complicated… if you’re hitting the memory ceiling, it will get a LOT slower, and possibly crash. However, if you set your memory settings TOO low, it will also get slower.

The key is to incrementally test until you find the settings that work best for you… ideally with Activity Monitor open and watching to see how different tasks affect the CPU activity and RAM usage.

Hope this helps,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Thanks for responding. So at this point, it appears to be “a little less than half.”

Thanks,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

You may find this article interesting: https://www.barefeats.com/quad06.html — it compares a test comp and finds the Quad G5/2.5 to be 8% slower at After Effects than a Mac Pro 3.0 — considering that AE on an Intel Mac will gain speed next year when AE becomes Intel-native, the exact same Quad G5 will lag much farther behind the exact same Mac Pro.

Plus, the Mac Pro is chip-upgradable with standard Intel chips… not that it will be cheap (nor Apple-supported), it is said that 4-core Xeon chips should be able to swap out the existing 2-core chips in a Mac Pro… So while the Quad G5/2.5 will remain a Quad G5/2.5, you may find your Mac Pro is an 8-core machine in a year or two.

My personal experience is that I have more crashes and problems with AE on a G5 than I do on my Mac Pro. However, I use my Mac Pro more for Final Cut Pro than AE, and only just recently upgraded to AE 7, so I can not say that I have tested the full gamut of AE’s features.

Running AE on a Mac Pro is NOT supported by Adobe, so you do so at your own risk. My opinion is that the Mac Pro is a better deal if you plan to keep it for more than a year, where the Quad G5 is Adobe-supported, and will give near equal performance (and possibly but not definitively better stability) for the next year or so.

Your deciding factor may be if you want to run other pro apps on the same machine… If Final Cut Studio or Shake are on the same machine, you will get much better mileage out of the Mac Pro. If you need to run non-Universal apps, you may want the G5.

As for the memory, 3GB is plenty for now if you mainly will be running AE, as Rosetta will not let you use all of it for AE.

I would check with Blackmagic about their support of AE on Intel Macs… they have a great support department. You can also post on the Blackmagic forum here at the COW.

Hope this helps,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

keeping in mind that it is an unsupported configuration no matter what you do, I have found that AE 7 is at least 50% faster on my Mac Pro than AE 6.5 was. As long as you follow the instructions here, you should be able to get it to work with no problems.

However, this is NOT a guarantee. You may want to wait to see if someone with a similar computer to yours pipes in their results. So far everyone I have seen posting has been using 3GB of RAM or more, and most have Mac Pros.

Hope this helps,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Great question; I am going more on observations than hard facts. Would you mind please testing and getting back to us?

It could be more than an interesting coincidence that 1.5GB is half of 3GB. Maybe Rosetta protects only half of the available memory. Or, maybe 1.5GB is the limit no matter how much memory you have.

Just keep in mind that when I tell AE it can use exactly 1.5GB, it still crashes— this apparently does not allow enough headroom. You might want to try setting it at 2GB as a starting point. Make sure you have a high res comp with a few filters going, adjustment layer(s), maybe a nested comp or two. If it works, try raising by 500MB at a time. If it doesn’t, try lowering by 500MB at a time.

I look forward to your results.

If anyone has any hard facts on this apparent Rosetta memory limit, can you please enlighten us?

Thanks,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

see my article for a possible fix:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=%3CFORUMID%3E&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/jones_graham/AE7_on_Intel_MacPro/index.html

Hope this helps,
Graham Jones.