[Steve Forde]

no worries- anyone can ping me if they wish. Although I sometimes get upwards of 300 emails a day! (means I might be a little slow in responing…;(

sforde@gridironsoftware.com

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

You will recieve an email when you fill out the form, then another when you are actually accepted in the beta.

You should have gotten the accepted one by now.

Let me know off-list if this is not the case…

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.
sforde@gridironsoftware.com

[Steve Forde]

I would stick all the apps on the 10K Raptor – and set all cache’s (except the system cache – keep that on the 10K – it’ll be there by default if the 10K is drive C) and data etc to the RAID.

My $.02

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Would it be possible for you to send us the .aep? (no footage needed at this point – will ping if we need it).

Please send us the project at: support@gridironsoftware.com

In terms of other apps running, Nucleo is designed to basically max out a machine to provide fast previews and renders. I really recommend not running anything beyond AE and Nucleo.

Nucleo Pro is the version you want with multiple applications running, and not having Nucleo max everything out.

check out https://www.gridironsoftware.com/NucleoPro

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Nicholas – would it be possible for you to send us your project?

email us at support@gridironsoftware.com

Don’t need the footage (will ping you if we do…), just the .aep

Thanks

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Scott,

Please make sure you update your Magic Bullet. There was a bug (fix was released about a month ago) with how certain parts of bullet would use CPU’s. This left nothing for Nucleo to use, as Bullet would artificially use all CPU (without actually doing anything).

I am not aware of any tinderbox issues, but we almost scale linearly with Bullet (on your dual should cut time in half), once you run the most current version.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

What is the spec of the spare rendering box vs. the spec of your workstation?

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Short answer – yes you can. Currently X-Factor is shipping for AE 6.5, but we do plan to ship X-Factor for AE 7 right around the same time as we ship Nucleo Pro (coming soon…)

Here’s the scenario how you could use X-Factor and Nucleo in the same shop.

You have a total of say 10 workstations running AE – all connected via Gigabit Ethernet. During the day, all 10 workstations are …well…being used. This is where using Nucleo makes sense. Nucleo will give speedup on the local workstation by using all available CPU in the appropriate manner.

However, in this case, one of the poor AE artists is under massive deadline, and his comrades have completely abandoned him for the evening. The good news is, there are now 9 idle workstations potentially just sitting there doing nothing. This is where you could use X-Factor and turn all those 9 machines into an ad-hoc render farm for the 1 AE user still hard at work.

Unfortuntately, you can’t run both Nucleo and X-Factor simultaneously. During a render or preview, you must choose which one is most appropriate given your hardware and infrastructure.

That does not stop you from having both installed at the same time. There are no conflicts with having both installed on the same machine.

Please keep in mind that X-Factor is not for the faint at heart when it comes to setup and installation. Everything must be working correctly to achieve the benefit of X-Factor. This means that networking, storage, permissions, etc MUST be in a good state for X-Factor to properly see all machines, and distribute work for them.

In many cases, this can be non-trivial, and expensive (dedicated render farms usually need special power and air conditioning etc). Therefore, if you don’t have any experience with IT and networking, or don’t have an IT team at your disposal, the benefits X-Factor can provide may be minimal (and perhaps frustrating). In this case, I would highly recommend sticking with Nucleo or Nucleo Pro (shipping soon).

Hope this helps…

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Although still a little pricey – https://www.boxxtech.com/products/apexx8.asp

That said, Tyan – https://www.tyan.com/ – (motherboard maker) is shipping 4 physical CPU (4 X Dual Core = 8 CPU) and 8 physical CPU (8 X Dual Core = 16 CPU) white box motherboards for the true adventurer.

Also – Intel and AMD have announced 4 Core (4 Core x 1 Physical CPU) silicon that will be shipping in Q3 this year. All this being said, the software (excluding Nucleo and Nucleo Pro of course…;) is going to take some time to catch up.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.

[Steve Forde]

Corrupted RAM is a very likely candidate. Your OS has the habit of always assigning the same memory segments when running applications etc. AE on the other hand has the ability to access vast volumes of RAM. AE may be the only application trying to access a segment of RAM the OS has never used before, and this segment could be corrupt. This would give you the impression that AE is blowing up all the time.

If you are on windows, I would recommend running both of the following (as there are different ways each tool works with windows and BIOS).

https://www.memtest.org/
https://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

If you are on OS X – I would use the following (which has saved us alot of frustration as the G5 Quads seem to be shipping with alot of corrupted RAM)…

https://www.memtestosx.org/

Hope this helps.

Steve
GridIron Software Inc.