[Pat Bray]

Thanks for your comment, I know, the reply I had was a bit flakey! Still trying to find out what they want, hopefully someone will tell me soon!

Cheers

Pat

[Pat Bray]

Thanks Dan, I’ll give that a try and let you know how it goes….

P

[Pat Bray]

Hi Ted

Thanks for the advice, I’ve checked everything you’ve suggested, apparently it looks like the clients have shot progressive and laid off interlaced so I don’t know if this has degraded things somewhat. I asked for a progressive export from FCP and it looks horrible so rendering out a version of my title and dropping it into the edit suit to view on a broadcast monitor, hopefully it might ok…

Cheers
Patrick

[Pat Bray]

Thanks folks for the advice, I’m using the Per-character 3D tool and it’s working well, however the interconnecting ‘bars’ are causing a problem. I wondered, using the vertical text tool, I’ve created some underlines which acts as the interconnecting bars, but they need to be offset by so many degrees each, so they twist round correctly (hope this makes sense!). Is there some way of doing this or perhaps using an expression?

[Pat Bray]

Many thanks for the advice, that might just work. I’ll need to figure out how to add the connecting branches between the two letter strands and keep them in sync with them, will move to 3D if I have no luck…

P

[Pat Bray]

Hi Dave, thanks for the reply. It’s an ongoing debate but looks like we’ll go for a 12-core pro.
Should anyone else be interested in this I’ve listed all the notes I’ve found below, hope it helps:

iMac i7 –

According to Macworld’s tests, the Core i7 iMac beat the 8-core Mac Pro 2.2GHz in a number of Speedmark 6 tests, HOWEVER, although in terms of raw horsepower, display quality and price, an iMac is the obvious choice, its not if your plans involve using any future versions of After Effects, which begins shipping in just a few days (CS5), if you plan on upgrading, or running on fast external hard drives.

CS5 is going to be a big deal for working on broadcast HD, as the native 64-bit support means you can tap all the RAM on your system to work more efficiently with HD, 2K, and 4K projects, rather than being limited to 4GB RAM per core as with previous versions of AE, and adding RAM is the best single thing you can do to improve AE performance. (Note: the iMac is a quad-core system with a maximum RAM capacity of 16GB, so there will be no benefits in using CS5’s new 64bit support)

Also, the two links below show that in terms of AE rendering, the mac pro 8-core still halve (approx) processing time compared to the iMac:

https://www.barefeats.com/imi7m.html

https://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html

Waiting for the 12-core Mac Pro –

Rumored to be released in June, the 12-core will have a big impact on multiprocessor rendering and use of the 12-core processors will reestablish a much larger performance gap between Apple’s consumer and professional desktop computers

It will also allow up to 128GB RAM compared to 16BG RAM of the iMac i7

Other considerations include –

The iMac is not expandable, so you can’t add a video card like AJA or Blackmagic Design, to monitor your work on a broadcast monitor

You can’t add a RAID card for working with uncompressed HD footage

You’ll have to daisy-chain multiple external hard drives and maybe a Blu-ray burner off a single FW800 bus, which is slow

There is NO option for fast external storage for the iMac as it only runs via firewire 800. Real world speed writes can drop as low as 45MB/sec, so this area is the Achille’s heel of the iMac

Mac Pro has bigger “data pipes” that creative and high end 3D apps can take advantage of, not to mention dual CPU capability and expandability

[Pat Bray]

Thanks for the info Uli, I doubt we’ll use Premier Pro, but what about Final Cut Pro, does the graphics card issues apply to this too?
P

[Pat Bray]

Thanks for the prompt reply Walter, I’ll add what you’ve said to my proposal, however I have a question regarding RAM – if you need 2/4 per core, then the imac would be maxed out at 16 as it has a quad core cpu, so when CS5 comes out with its 64bit support, there’ll be no additional benefit as it’ll be operating at maximum capacity, correct? If what I’ve written is gibberish I apologise!

P

[Pat Bray]

Plus point to this thread: There’s some good pointers and info regarding hardware upgrading for AE

Minus point to this thread: Taliesn Jones – must be a f**king nightmare to work with…

[Pat Bray]

…but with an imac with up to 16GB RAM capacity, it would be beneficial, yes? (I try math but it doesn’t compute 😛 )