[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks John,

Do you know where I can get hold of an old copy of Premiere for mac?

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
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Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

You can enable multiprocessing within AE CS3 from the preferences, but to get the extra background/spec and pre-comp proxy benefits you need to buy Nucleo Pro 2. Haven’t got it myself yet, but I hear it is indespensible.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
————————————-
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks Adam/Nicolas,

Great news about C4D running great on OSX….I can live without 64 for the time being, as long as it’s on the way and is doable now in OSX, which it sounds like it is. I just wasn’t sure if OSX was a true 64-bit OS, but sounds like Leopard is.

Nicolas – do you find a BIG difference in speed/interactivity running your apps on striped raptors? If so, what RAID config are you running for OS/apps drives? I was thinking of inviesting in one raptor for my OS/apps, but 2 striped seems a little overkill..? Ideally I want to try get 5 x SATAs in my Mac Pro for a RAID-5 for my media, leaving room for one OS drive and one optical drive in the top bay.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
————————————-
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Last thing – is there any benefit in working with 2 x monitors in C4D? I use a 2 mon configuration for most apps, but will C4D work on multiple monitors?

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
————————————-
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks Adam,

So do you see any reason why I should use C4D on a PC rather than a Mac?

I’m 95% sure I’m going the mac route (mainly cos if I come unstuck later on I can always run Windows on the mac, albeit not natively.) My only real quarm was whether I wanted to go for Eyeon Fusion as my main compositing app and NOT running that natively would be a real headache by all accounts. So I’ve opted for trusty old Shake for now (maybe this new Apple compositing app will also surface sometime before I’m old and grey!)

But if C4D runs significantly better and can access more RAM on Windows 64 aswell, then that *may* sway me?…

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
————————————-
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Yes, Sorry Steve…I kind of made up a post with everything I can think of and copy+paste it into several relevant forums.

Thanks for your input.

I understand ATI have a new mid-range card coming out for the ’08 Mac Pro, which I may wait for, as I’ve read that NVidia cards play up with Apple Color and Matrox..but then someone else said NVidia is favourably for C4D!? If your ATI work fine, then I guess there can’t be much in it!

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
————————————-
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

I’d love to be able to apply different trackers to diff points on a mask…would that be a script-based command or is it not possible in AE?

I currently use Mocha for all my tracking & roto, but export of masks to AE is not possible so I have to export matte runs and track matte them in AE. To have mocha masks in AE would be special. Both can use Bezier splines so it *should* be possible I would have thought.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
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Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Ahhh…I will leave PPro on Mac alone for now then! To be honest I was only planning on using it for capture/playout and MPEG encoding….I mainly do GFX/VFX.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
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Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Andrew….just make up a 10-bit RGB TIFF at 1920×1080 – see how big it is, multiply by the amount of frames you envisage = your answer.

As for AE /cores / RAM etc…I think you’ve got a bit muddled up.

2GB per core means you should have 2GB RAM available for each core to utilise them efficiently when previewing/rendering. To do this you will either need AE CS3 and/or Nucleo Pro.

GHz is the cores – the higher that is the fast your machine/AE will process your data. If you’re sat with a client working on HDCAM SR footage I’d recommend at least 8-cores and at least 16GB RAM, or you’ll be sat there twiddling your thumbs waiting for things to happen quite a bit. If it’s non-client attended and time isn’t as much of an issue, 4 cores / 8GB should be plenty.

If you have RAID-0 storage and keep your applications on one harddrive, your source footage on another and your renders to another that will speed up thoughput of data aswell..

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
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Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Fusion is a totally different workflow to AE. AE is layer-based and Fusion is node-based, meaning quite a steep learning curve if you’ve not tried that approach before. That said, there are big pros and big cons for both…

AE is mainly a motion graphics package, with some compositing/grading capabilities. You can do most things in AE eventually though. AE can use TONNES of RAM via Nucleo and lots of processors which should make rendering very quick.

Fusion is mainly a compositing/grading package, but has very good mograph tools and also a full true 3D compositing environment and some basic 3D modelling tools. AFAIK Fusion is TOTALLY multicore aware, not just with renders and previews like AE, which should make interactivity in complex comps much smoother. You can use most of AE’s plugins in Fusion aswell, however Fusion can only access a maximum of 4GB RAM and it will never be quite as smooth for mograph as AE is. It also costs more than 3 times as much as AE and doesn’t integrate aswell with other Adobe products (obviously)

Swings and roundabouts – I’d get both if you can so you have a more complete toolset.

If I could afford it and wasn’t going the Mac route soon then I’d buy Fusion in a flash. Only messed with a demo version myself.

If Fusion 64bit ever comes out and they made it for OSX aswell that would be something AWESOME.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1.0.1 / Elastic Reality
————————————-
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB/80GB/600GB RAID-0