[Jimmy Brunger]

…And now my exported 32-bit file has been put back into a new timeline with NO effects and put footage underneath…17mins rendering needed!

Am I going about all this horribly wrong or something?

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

…Just to add..

I have waited 10 mins for my render..then when I put some video below the 32-bit ‘snow’ footage the render bar turns red again!?! Does PPro not render per-layer?

Finally (I’m trying to get as much done before the client turns up with the final graded footage to go under my snow) I tried exporting out a 32-bit AVI of the snow instances, to avoid rendering again later and it’s now taking another 15 mins to render it again for export..shouldn’t it be using the already rendered preview file to export?

Sorry if I sound like a spoilt brat, but this seems a ludicrous way of processing footage to me.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

I didn’t know Xena board doesn’t support x64 – darn..that’s what I was going to go for.

A Decklink HD Extreme should serve all your HD + SD needs and give output/capture..as for DVI/HDMI output. How many DVI ports does you Quadro have? If you’ve not got one spare then perhaps adding another GFX card for that purpose would work? Or add the intensity card – what’s the prob with the intensity?

BTW…how does the Adobe s/ware run on x64 in general? I’m thinking of going x64 so I can load with RAM for a Nucleo+8-core system just running Adobe suite/Mocha + Combustion. And then using a dual-boot, so I can keep all my other every day apps that only run on XP32. Do you reckon that will work? I figured a dual boot system would mean no conflicts with my pro-apps..?

[Jimmy Brunger]

When researching systems a couple of months ago I was told by HP that you could get the 8400 with 2 x Quad 3GHz Xeons.. Also been looking at Boxx 8300 system which is the same config but with better/more specialzed support and I think slightly better made/tested components. It costs a little more than the HP but probs worth it for the support alone.

Have you tried going to 4GB RAM? each app may only be able to use 2GB, but the full 4GB will be used in total (minus you OS and that PCI Express black hole thingy..) Then there’s the 3GB/switch but I’ve been warned away from that by many. Strangley though on Eyeon’s website they recommend the 3GB switch when using Fusion with a 32 bit OS. Go figure.

Am I right in thinking that OSX 10.5 can utilise more than 4GB RAM then? What is the limit for each 32 bit app? and what is the total limit does anyone know? I’m sort of thinking on the mac route, but the cost of switching all my apps is a scary prospect!

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

>After Effects presets

Yeah, that’s about all I use it for..occasionally when I need to look at thumbs for EPS/AI files.

Does anyone else ever run into this constantly having to navigate to diff folders for opening/saving problem…or is it just me!?

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Do you have multithreading enabled in the AE CS3 prefs? I don’t think it’s automatically switched on. I’m not lucky enough to have CS3, or a 8-core workstation alas. 🙁

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

AE does output to SWF aswell as FLV though doesn’t it?

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Caps lock – do you know what..I hadn’t even thought of that! I guess it can’t redraw the window if it’s not displaying it. Is that the same if you just Tab the renders window to fill screen so you can’t see the comp window?

JPEG on several drives – it’s just one image on a standard 80GB SATA drive currently, so no it’s not split over several drives..if it was on my RAID-0 then it’d be split over 2 drives, but ideally I only want to keep stuff on there that can be either re-captured from tape or re-rendered..due to the safety (or lack of) on a RAID-0.

All drives constantly de-fragged with Diskeeper Pro – so maybe it is cos it’s such a big still? Maybe the reduce interlace blur? Seems like a long time when all the client wants is a simple move that doesn’t chatter! Hey ho.

Any other tips guys?

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

If it is a ‘hardware accelerator’ you’re after then the obvious one would be Matrox’s Axio products…I think you have to buy them as complete systems, but they are/were based around HP x8400 workstations and are blisteringly fast from what I’ve heard, but expensive when compared with a standard PPro system. You may be able to buy just the Axio box to add to your system – give them a call.

If it’s just a way to ingest/playout footage to tape and broadcast monitor previews you need then AJA/Blackmagic, etc are your thing. Like someone said above, if you use their codecs there are some realtime effects gained. But if CS3 can use upto 16-cores (is that right?!? What does CS2 support/utilise btw?) then just get yourself a top-end 8-core HP box with a fast RAID and you’ll be flying.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Looking at that clip, it looks like the text is a bog standard animate in preset from AE and a bit of Zaxwerks/other 3D app for the 3D text. You have many more options for blurs, motion blur, plugins etc in AE and from what I gather if it’s vector art within AE it exports as scalable vector art in the exported SWF file? I could be wrong..I don’t really do any Flash work.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0