[Steve Forde]

The current download of X-Factor 1.5.3 is not yet AE 7 compatible. We estimate shipping an AE 7 compatible version of X-Factor mid-march.

The current download for GridIron Nucleo is fully AE 7 compatible.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Thought I would resurrect an old post I made about RAM and AE. The only difference is that AE 7 is now out, and that it will use up to 3GB of RAM on a Mac. AE 6.5 will only use 2GB. Of course (shameless plug coming up….), Nucleo will eat as much RAM as you can throw at it – especially on a Quad, and give you the fast render times to make it worth it.

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=867951

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.
https://www.gridiron-nucleo.com

[Steve Forde]

Easiest way to delete the prefs is to hold down cmd-option-shift (mac) or ctrl-alt-shift (win) when starting AE, at which point AE will ask you if you wish to delete the prefs file. (works for both AE 6.5 and 7)

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

GridIron Nucleo is a performance enhancement plugin that is designed to maximize the use of AE on a multi-processor or multi-core workstation. In short, it speeds up renders and previews if you have more than 1 CPU.

Check out: https://www.gridironxfactor.com/products/nucleo_overview.asp

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Since we had to benchmark this stuff when shipping Nucleo, I would have to say that Quicktime Animation is the fastest “compressor”. The reason being, there really is no “compression”.

What I mean is, in AE, when you compress using the DV format (or any other codec for that matter), AE will first render a frame, then it will compress the frame to whatever codec you have specified.

By using the QT Animation codec, there really isn’t much in terms of compression, so AE practically skips this step. The only thing that may cause this to be slower, is the time it takes for AE to write the frame into the .mov file. Therefore, if working in say SD or smaller, you may be fine with QT Animation. If working in HD or say 4K, then any savings in time you gained from compressing using QT Animation, will be lost due to the size of the data being written. (Depends on your HDD)

Unfortunately therefore, it all depends. You need to find that fine line between size of data, and compression speed.

Not to mention that you may have no choice but to compress, as your computer may not be able to playback a QT Animation reliably if it is too large. As for other codecs, they are all completely different depending on what you are doing.

Apologies for the vague answer, others may have a better comment.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Yep – definitely agree with you on that one. The AE API’s are probably the richest in the industry. Its no wonder that Combustion, FCP etc all have based their plugin architectures on AE’s foundation.

Not just is the AE API rich though, the development team is very accessible. They encourage a collaborative development environment, which allows us to have a big impact on their stuff, as well as them having a big impact on our stuff.

All in all, we will be supporting other products beyond AE in the future, but we generally think of AE first because of its rich API structure. I wouldn’t be surprised if thats the case for many 3rd parties.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Thanks!

We’re cooking up a couple of new things for the NAB timeframe, so it should be interesting. Sometimes being small has its advantages!

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Thanks Barend. Will be here as much as time permits. In research mode for a new product right now, so on the net alot. However, I hit travel season soon (couple of weeks..) and may not be around as much.

I really like the COW though – its a great research tool for software design, and really allows me to learn what’s important and what’s not.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

I am going to insert my comments into parts of your message for clarity…

—-

“pentium 4, 3.4ghz, sata raid, and 4gig ram ddr2 (motherboard: https://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8ANXP-D.htm ) winXP AE6.5″

I just checked online, and yes this is only a single CPU with HT, as well as PCI-Express. Nucleo should be telling you when AE starts that it does not meet minimum system requirements. Its just a warning, because things might actually slow down, which Nucleo cannot control on this system. Nucleo will however, still run as if the system was a dual-processor machine.

“It will probably be the the fact that I rendered a movie instead of an image sequence. (dv pal, dv render settings and i used trapcode:lux coincidently)”

Ya – rendering Movies with Nucleo is really only beneficial on a true multi-cpu or multi-core workstation. There just isn’t the CPU to do things quickly on only a single CPU with HT.

However, I do want to point out that Nucleo will also not provide much speed gain with Trapcode Lux, no matter what system you are on. This is because Lux (as opposed to Shine, Particular, Starglow, 3D Stroke and Echospace) is already multi processor aware. There is a minor speed gain on say a Quad, but definitely not on a single CPU with HT. That said, if Lux was used with say another plugin like Particular, then nucleo will provide a tremendous gain, as the use of Particular will essentially “slow” Lux down.

Check out: https://www.gridironxfactor.com/products/nucleo_benchmarks_tc_lux.asp for benchmarks on Lux as well as the other Trapcode plugins.

“But here is my other question, (this is all before I tried nucleo, this is also the reason why I tried it)

I had 1 gig of ram, made a test project (the same, with lux), and it rendered for about 10minutes.
Then I bought 3 gig of ram so now I have 4. Then I rendered my test project with great expactations, but it took him 12min this time!!!! I am shocked.

Could it be the fact that I have 2 x 3 ram slots and inserted 2x (1 stick of 1 gig, 2 sticks of 512mb all ddr2) and that the ram sticks all need to be the same?”

All RAM being equal should not be a problem. DDR2 does not require parity to run (unless on Mac), but it is generally a good idea to make sure that each stick is in the same slot in the first bank of slots, as its equal “partner” in the second bank of slots. Therefore, if you have the 1 GB stick in the first slot of bank 1, make sure the other 1 GB stick is in the first slot of bank 2…and so on.

However, – I found this on your motherboard’s site:

“*Note: Through GIGABYTE innovation of supporting 6 DIMMS memory on Intel chipset motherboard. However, due to chipset limitations there will be a frequency downgrade of memory modules when 6 DIMMs are fully loaded.”

This means that the speed of the RAM is downgraded (I don’t know by how much) when all the RAM slots are full. This could have a major impact with AE (especially with Lux). This could be the primary reason for your slowdown. I don’t know for sure – but if you placed 4 1GB sticks, you would not need all slots, and not hit this limitation, according to your PC manufacturer. I have not tried this, so unfortunately I’m just listening to your manufacturer.

“If I check properties under my computer, it says that there is only 3.20gb of Ram, is this normal?”

Unfortunately, Yes. You have a motherboard with PCI-Express. This will create what is called the RAM “Black Hole”. What’s happening is your motherboard BIOS is taking 800MB of RAM of your 4GB away from windows to use as a buffer for the PCI-Express card bus. This can be modified in the BIOS – but I don’t recommend it. This will happen regardless of having any PCI-Express devices or not. This is why windows only says it has 3.2GB of RAM.

“I read about the 3gb switch in xp, something with the boot.ini file. Should I use it? And if so, do you know a site where they explain it in plain English HOW to do it? I am just not nerdy enough to understand the microsoft manual about it. :D”

I don’t recommend doing this at all. Its really not meant for win XP, but more windows XP server. Its only there because the two operating systems share the same core foundation. It can be more of a hassle than its worth in terms of performance. Also, if AE could see all 3GB of RAM, your performance would probably be even worse, as the OS would not have much left (much less than 200MB due to other applications and services), and everything would grind to a halt.

Hope this helps…

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

What are the specs for your system?

If it is just a single CPU with HT technology, the performance gains are pretty minor (compared with multiple CPU’s). Also – rendering to movies (as opposed to Image Sequences or Previews) may take longer using Nucleo with just a single CPU and HT.

Let me know more about the system you are using, and the type of project (resolution, effects and render settings), and I will try to shed some light on it.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.