[Kevin Camp]

i used the settings as outlined by graham and i’ve had fairly good results as far as speedier renders. the settings were: max mem use 30%; max ram cache 15%.

if your having problems with your render using all available ram and stopping (or crashing). use the secret pref — hold the shift key while bringing up the pref panel (note: hold the mouse button down while accessing the pref panel). you can choose any pref choice (like general). then, after the panel opens, select the pref pulldown and one named secret should be at the bottom. here you can tell ae to purge frames after a set number of frames, thus forcing it to clear ram. if this is your problem, try every 10 frames or 5 frames (even every frame, if the problem persists), although purging frames often generally adds to render time.

you can also enable disk caching in the memory & cache pref. disk caching won’t speed things up (usually slow things down) but it can help with memory related crashes.

aharon rabinowitz has a good tutorial that explains the secret pref, but i can’t seem to find it right now.

[Kevin Camp]

i would think particular from trapcode would work well… you may also give particle playground a try (standard ae effect with pro bundle). its a little harder to learn but it should work for this effect.

[Kevin Camp]

the issue with cycore effects seems to be primarily an intel mac problem… and if you’re not using them in your comp then they probably aren’t the problem.

you may want to try the secret menu — hold the shift key, then select ae>preferences (any pref), now select the preference pulldown and you should see one called secret. select secret and set the purge frame to 5, or 10 (it may take a few times to find a setting that will work)

note: sometimes the secret menu won’t come up unless i hold the mouse button the entire time, releasing only to select a pref option — old mac style (versus new windows like click and click again style).

[Kevin Camp]

andrew kramer has an ink spot tutorial… you could use his technique in the first part, where he creates his ink spot (splatter) to create some quick and dirty blood splatters. he used a particle generator (particular, i believe) to generate random circles that made quick “splats.” you could refine more if needed.

[Kevin Camp]

yep, ae>preferences>memory & cache…

[Kevin Camp]

here’s a thread graham jones posted where he describes reducing cache settings in ae to spead up renders on a macpro.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/891369?univpostid=891369&pview=t

he describes an issue with rosetta that limits ram to all powerpc native software (like adobe products) to around 1.5 gb. and by limiting the ram that ae can use will avoid hitting this ceiling and actually speed up renders.

hope this helps, it helped me and others…

there’s also others who will run windows xp on there mac with windows ae and get great results, if you have a windows version of ae (and bootcamp… and an extra version of windows xp)

[Kevin Camp]

i just read about someone reporting an issue (on http://www.xlr8yourmac.com) with having both an ati and nvidia card installed in their macpro. they suspect there is a conflict between the drivers.

i actually still have the original nvidia 7300 card in my macpro, along with the ati x1900 xt… there is no display connected to the 7300, i just thought it was a safe place to keep the card (maybe connect an old crt at some point). but i think i’ll pull it and see what happens — i had disabled opengl in ae months ago when i started experiencing some issues, maybe it was a driver conflict…

which graphics card do you have?

[Kevin Camp]

since the plugin is called firtree, i’m betting your stuck with needles… write to them and express interest in a plugin called deciduoustree and they may create one… or maybe just ‘tree’ and you can pick the foliage.

[Kevin Camp]

what’s your platform… mac? pc? mac os 10.4.8? windows xp pro? ram?

i’ve had similar app crashes with ae on a macpro, and i’ve linked many to the standard cycore effects that come with ae.

[Kevin Camp]

i experience frequent issues on a macpro (2x3ghz core duo, 6gb ram, 1tb sata raid), but i have traced almost all issues to cycore effects.

i have reached the ram limits on projects, and set the purge to around every 5 frames to remedy it. but when the ram limit was hit, i just got an error message, not a crash or freeze. so the spinning beach ball of death may be related to something else, and i might suspect the ram.

have you ran the hardware test from the osx install disc?

also, have you tried disabling opengl rendering in ae?