[Jason Myres]

AE will should be fine on that configuration, but some things you might want to consider:

RAM: 24GB is great and you have the right dim count (6 x 4GB). No changes.

CPU: i7s are good at many things, but I would take a look at a Dual Quad-Core Xeon (Nehalem or Westmere). Dual CPUs means double the memory bandwidth, double the L2 and L3 (if not more) Cache, basically two entire processor pipelines for your apps to work with. If for instance you were able to get one 8-core i7, it would not be as fast as dual 4-core Xeons. Can’t emphasize this enough. This is where you want to spend any extra money. You will feel where it went every time you render or do a ram preview.

SSDs: If used as a boot disk, they can make booting and screen refreshes faster, but I would get one or two 1TB Hitachi’s for OS and media, and then aim your scratch folders at the one SSD or two SSDs as a RAID0 stripe. Don’t put anything valuable on it, just scratch, render, and other temporary files. A good alternative might be to use one or two 300GB WD Raptors.

GPU: A GTX580 is a nice card, but if you’re interested in ever using Adobe Premier or Photoshop under acceleration, its not currently on the supported cards list. I would change to a GTX470 or try to grab a Quadro 3800 or 4800 as they are being phased out, but are still very powerful.

Support: Call it experience, but it’s tough when you’ve spent $3500 and there’s no one to call when things go south. I’d buy from a vendor who will at least provide you with daytime support.

The new Mac Pros and z800s are a little out of your budget, so if I were you and wanted to buy new, I’d take a look at this:

https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-t7500/pd?refid=workstation-precision-t7500

If you want are OK with buying used, I purchased my last two Mac Pros from eBay. Both were good deals, in mint condition, and I’ve had no problems with either of them.

JM

[Jason Myres]

At the high-end of content creation there are only two computers that exist:

1) A Mac Pro
(https://store.apple.com/us/configure/Z0M4?mco=MTg2OTQ5OTk)

or

2) or an HP z800
(https://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/nz/en/sm/WF05a/12454-12454-296719-4270224-4270224-3718645.html)

You can build your own machine, but then you’re spending time on computers and not art. There are lots of articles out there on how to save money building your own workstation, but anyone who’s attempting to do that by putting together some i7-based, day-glow, “Mac Pro Killer” is kidding themselves. If the motherboard you’ve spec’ed for yourself isn’t a $600+ dual-processor Westmere or Nehalem, than you’re not even close.

So you have to decide: Do you care about art, or do you care about computers? If you care about art, then you spend ten minutes ordering the nicest configuration you can afford from one of the two choices above, and use the remaining 7h 50m of your day making art.

In AE the things that matter are:
-RAM: Min 6GB. Populate in sets of three or six for Nehalem or Westmere (6GB, 12GB, 24GB, etc).
-CPUs and Cores: dual CPUs are a huge help in AE.
-Dedicated disks for your media. Fast drives can help for scratch locations and rendering to disk.

A good GPU is becoming important for many apps (Cinema 4D, Maya, 3ds Max) and plug-ins (Sapphire, Boris), but as Dave will tell you, it’s not quite ready for primetime in After Effects.

If you need to save money, buy used on eBay. Owners of Mac Pros and z800s generally take good care of their machines.

JM

[Jason Myres]

Before you jump you might want to take a look at this, which is also on dvxuser.

https://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?230484-GH2-Blue-horizontal-banding

And in counterpoint:

https://prolost.com/blog/2010/11/14/hdslr-shopping-what-you-want-is-a-canon-60d.html

For the record, I am a huge fan of both cameras, and am having a stellar time with my 60D while I wait for Panasonic to work the bugs out of the GH2.

JM

[Jason Myres]

Incorrect? As in, is it possible for a 60D to overheat? Sure. But it’s much better than it’s predecessors, and under “normal” conditions, which I was attempting to test in, it can shoot for several hours with no problems.

Unfortunately, DCI doesn’t give any information about the circumstances they where testing under, but they did say it only gave them a problem once. Beyond that, it’s a pretty resoundingly positive review and the #1 rated camera on their site right now. If you’re considering shooting with one, I doubt you’ll be very disappointed. There are a lot of people out there getting good results with it.

https://prolost.com/blog/2010/11/14/hdslr-shopping-what-you-want-is-a-canon-60d.html

https://vimeo.com/groups/60d/videos/page:2/sort:newest

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/732048-REG/Canon_4460B004_EOS_60D_DSLR_Camera.html

JM

[Jason Myres]

Here’s another one….

https://www.maxtronic.com/pcie-san

There are definitely gotchas, but none of the sites profiling these solutions offer enough detail for you to clearly understand how they work. PCI-E can be very fast, but it’s essentially just another high-speed transport. There is no intelligence built in (that I know of) that will coordinate file access, so essentially it’s just a replacement for fibre channel. You still need to use “the SAN software of your choice” which means you’re back to the limitations of SAN-MP, FibreJet, or MetaSAN (cringe).

My guess is that it will allow you to aggregate a number of RAID chassis together into a large pool, and that it’s very fast, but it’s still “dumb” with out a software layer on top.

The company who finally creates an affordable, scalable storage solution, with (real) file-level locking will flip this entire industry on it’s ear.

JM

[Jason Myres]

Agree with Walter. There may be some clever multi-step work-around, but people who have to get work done use Automatic Duck for that.

https://www.automaticduck.com/products/piae/

JM

[Jason Myres]

[James Carroccio] “allow me to fully understand Visual Effects, digital compositing, Motion Capture, and so forth.”

Each of those could easily occupy an entire career. While everyone overlaps a bit depending on what they are interested in, I would try to focus on becoming very proficient with the software you enjoy using most, and then supplement that with other packages that compliment it. There are a few different paths you can take, but this is how I generally think of it:

Motion Design -> After Effects, Motion or Combustion, plus Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4D.
Compositing & VFX -> Nuke, Fusion, or Shake. Maya 2011 w/ Composite also overlaps here.
3D Modeling & Animation -> Maya, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, Houdini, Blender, Lightwave.

In my searches, I’ve found that After Effects, Nuke, Maya, Cinema 4D, and 3ds Max can all make you very employable right now, but like everything, it’s constantly changing. Many of these packages are pretty expensive, but developers usually offer academic versions or personal learning editions so you can become proficient.

Some paid, on-line options that you can check out:

https://www.lynda.com (popular software titles)
https://www.fxphd.com (high-end software titles)

There are also a ton of free tutorials on CreativeCOW, plus everywhere else on the web.

https://library.creativecow.net/
https://www.google.com/search?q=motion+graphics+vfx+3d+tutorials

JM

[Jason Myres]

Update: Radeon 5870

https://www.barefeats.com/wst10g3.html

JM

[Jason Myres]

Grab this adapter for your second monitor: https://store.apple.com/us/product/MB570Z/A?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY

JM

[Jason Myres]

Radeon 4870.

JM