Steve Forde
Forum Replies Created
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Multiprocessing in CS3 is identical in nature to Nucleo standard. In other words – the features of fast-render and fast-preview found in both Nucleo Pro and Nucleo are what you get in CS3. They behave almost identically – and for the most part achieve the same result.
Nucleo Pro does things like Background Render, Spec Preview / Render, Commit to Disk, Pre-comp proxies etc., which neither Nucleo standard nor Multiprocessing provide. Since Nucleo Pro maxes out CPU in all features – CS3 multiprocessing must be disabled when using NP2.
As for what could be locking up Multiprocessing and not locking up NP2 – unfortunately is difficult to track as they both use different architecture yet similar approach. Some users have reported that NP2 is slightly faster than Multiprocessing but both are designed to achieve max performance.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
[Laurie Pepper] “He would at least talk to me — because by the way, when I tried to contact Gridiron Software nobody responded to me, neither by phone nor email. “
Laurie – you sent an email to GridIron Software at 4:42pm EST yesterday. I responded to you on this forum at 9:06pm EST. What further response are you looking for?
What you choose to believe based on information from whichever source is entirely up to you.
The reason that I came down hard on some of your information is you propagated information as FACT from an authorized source (Adobe employee) when unfortunately it was entirely FICTION. In fact – I will go so far as to say that if the person feeding you that information is indeed an Adobe employee (as you imply), I would love to be a fly on the wall at their next performance review!
In short – your new mac pro will absolutely rock with AE, as long as you put the RAM in. OpenGL is not a big deal for AE – but may be handy for things like 3D etc. From an AE perspective video card is secondary to CPU, RAM and Disk.
Whether you choose to use NP2 is entirely up to you – (although I obviously recommend it – I work at GridIron). Your question to GridIron and on this forum was will Nucleo Pro use all 8 cores. Again – I answer – YES.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
Ummm – I have to admit, i have no clue what you are talking about here. First – lets look at some facts…
[Laurie Pepper] “CS3 DOES NOW use open gl previewing with 10.5.5.”
10.5.5 does not exist – YET. There is no way for you or anyone else to try this as Apple has not released it yet. Unfortunately – I believe your “super duper techie” is feeding you “super duper FALSE” information.
[Laurie Pepper] “or use Apple’s CHUD to disable 4 processors.”
CHUD (Computer Hardware Understanding Development) ) is a developer toolkit for performance optimization in Mac OS X. Here is Apple’s description….
“The Computer Hardware Understanding Developer Tools (CHUD Tools) are designed to help hardware and software developers measure and optimize the performance of Macintosh systems.”
So unless you have the source code for After Effects (which I HIGHLY doubt you do) – CHUD will do absolutely nothing for you in terms of CS3 optimization.
[Laurie Pepper] “He says that CS3 is buggy with an 8 core machine, because it can only use 4 processors & gets into logjams, “
CS3 has a feature called Multiprocessing that is very similar to our Nucleo (Not Nucleo Pro) product in terms of processor optimization. That statement from your super duper techie is completely false.
[Laurie Pepper] “I asked him: Can Nucleo Pro handle the 8 processors?”
Since I helped invent Nucleo Pro – I can say with a high degree of confidence that NP2 can use all 8 processors quite nicely. (just make sure you have 2GB of RAM per processor)
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
I don’t usually post in threads like this – would rather you folks talk about the product without our interference, for better or worse. (for objectivity etc).
—forgive the shameless plug—
Just wanted to pass along – IF there is interest in purchasing the product – it is 20% off until midnight tonight (april 24th) EDT. Thought based on the response might save you a few bucks.
—End Shameless Plug—
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
Yes – both methods use all CPU’s. Fast Preview was a feature of Nucleo standard that we kept in Nucleo Pro as many users were comfortable with it. Spec Preview works in the background using all CPU to create the green RAM cache line in AE while you work in the comp.
The difference is – we throttle Spec Preview so it won’t interfere with how AE behaves while you’re working. Therefore – depending on the situation (like turning performance to maximum in NP2 prefs), fast preview will generate the preview as fast as possible – with little regard to the performance of AE.
So really – it comes down to – do you want to render and work – then spec preview is the thing to use. If you want the preview as fast as possible and are willing to not use AE while its rendering – then use fast preview.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
The missing RAM IS the PCI-Blackhole. You should be able to view how much RAM the BIOS is reserving. This creates the effect of Win XP 32 not seeing the blackhole (as the motherboard takes it away from the OS to reserve for itself).
Therefore – if you have 4GB installed….
1. The BIOS will show that 4GB is installed – and that 1GB is reserved for the PCI bus.
2. Windows will only show that 3GB is installed – as that 1GB is taken away from it by the BIOS before Windows even boots up.All in all – WinXP will only show the amount of RAM that the BIOS has given it.
Hope this makes sense
Also – I have been to studios and production houses all over the planet – and have seen XP64 and Vista 64 running AE7 and CS3 quite nicely. It takes some tweaking every now and again – but if you need the horsepower – unfortunately its your only route when dealing with RAM limitations.
I will say that dealing with drivers, Quicktime etc on a Win 64 system is more complicated, and may only be palatable to folks with more advanced knowledge of dealing with the OS.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
There are differences in how multiprocessing native in AE CS3 works and NP2. The real short version is – we had to spend a year working on this issue (amongst others).
Both technologies use multiple instances of AE to render single frames, and then mux them together into a movie etc. They both consume large amounts of RAM.
Especially on Mac – there needs to be a “clean up” of RAM on shutdown. This isn’t always easy – especially with huge amounts of used RAM. We had to develop some pretty nifty code on this.
This is what causes the long shutdown. To properly purge all that RAM and return it to the system takes time. The more used RAM – the longer the shutdown can be.
BTW – all those who clamor for 64bit programs – this is the downside of it. Massive GB’s of RAM all used can make the application seem sluggish and the system slow (why bus speeds are so important on CPU and RAM). Also – all that RAM needs to be cleaned up.
We’ve worked hard to try and make it snappy and seamless – but would also keep an eye out for improvement here.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
The black hole is irrespective of Intel or AMD. It has to do with motherboard configuration etc. As an example- we have not seen this issue on the 8 core Mac Pro – as it uses a different motherboard than say the Tyan MB for an AMD system.
In 32 bit windows – upper limit for RAM (irrespective of NP2) is 4GB. Hard Stop.
In 64 bit windows – NP2 can use up to 4GB per Core max +4GB. Therefore – if you had an 8 core system = 36GB (4GB X 8 Core + 4GB = 36GB) would be the max. Many motherboards will not support that much RAM though.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
If you are doing a head to head comparison – make sure that you set the performance level to maximum in NP2. This will make it a more similar comparison as NP 2 will focus more on playing nice and constraining performance at the default performance setting. MP in AE will try to eat everything.
Also try it on multiple projects.
Let us know how you make out!
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
Unfortunately its a known issue with Light Factory. Double unfortunately, its a problem with Light Factory. The good folks at Red Giant Software are aware of the problem, and assure a patch is forthcoming.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc.