[Walter Soyka]

[Joe Murray] “Thanks for the link. I think what threw me off was the statement in this thread that “They’ve crippled the Mac Pro and iMac lines from running ethernet based storage easily.” I guess it should have said MacBOOK Pros instead of Mac Pros since no Mac Pros are based on core i5/i7 processors. “

Nope, it’s the Mac Pros, too, but it’s a different chipset and a different problem. Once the Nehalem Mac Pro (2009) hits 60 MB/s on its built-in Ethernet, it disconnects. The solution is to add an Ethernet card that doesn’t use the Hartwell chip, like the Small Tree PEG1D.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/197/856590

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Joe Murray] “We use ethernet storage with Mac Pros but not iMacs. Without going through the whole story again in this thread can you point me to some threads where these issues are discussed?”

Walter’s original thread on the i5/i7 iMacs not supporting jumbo frames on their Ethernet controller is here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1076136

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[mathew lisett] “how do i import or replace footage with multiple files? , as i cant find a single bit of software which will join mov files without re doign the encoding.”

What are the specs for your media — frame size, frame rate, and codecs? Are they all uniform?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[jim branstetter] “First my specs for the project are;
864×486
square pixel
24 fps
progressive “

Just for clarity — are your specs 24p as in 24.0 frames per second, or 23.976 frames per second? After Effects is very precise about frame rate.

[jim branstetter] “So my question is what is the best way to get rid of the interlacing and/or convert footage to “real” progressive? The project was edited in FCP and will be finished off in After Effects.”

Have you tried removing the pulldown?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

From Apple’s specs page for the Mac mini:

10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45) interface with support for jumbo frames

I can’t verify personally whether it works with Ethernet-based storage.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[John Jackowiak] “Anyway, There is an external monitor connected through an aja board on this machine used for final cut pro. However, I did notice that even though the preview setting was set to “computer monitor only”, they were still getting an image coming through to their external monitor. I thought that initially might have been the problem. But when I disconnected the aja board, I found that while they obviously no longer had signal going to their external monitor, the issue remained.”

Perhaps the old AJA plugins for AE are installed on that system? Check the Plugins folder within the Adobe After Effects CS3 folder. If they are there, you can remove them; they are not actually necessary for video preview with AE anymore.

If it’s not AJA-related, a couple other things to try:

Check for updates. For CS3, you should be running version 8.0.2.

Turn off OpenGL if it’s on.

Rebuild your AE preferences (you will have to change any customized settings back manually later). Hold down Cmd-Opt-Shift while loading AE.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

I agree with Dave about the multiprocessing — the general rule of thumb for CS3 is 2-4 GB of RAM per core. With your 8-core machine, you’d benefit from 16 to 32 GB of RAM.

As for the slower-than-realtime RAM preview playback, what are your video preview settings (located under Preferences > Video preview)?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “This recommendation falls into the “tricks & techniques” category than actual training, but have you checked out the tutorials on videocopilot.net? “

There’s the often-overlooked VCP basic training, too: https://www.videocopilot.net/basic/

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

Episode Pro can encode h264 and wrap it in an MPEG-2 transport stream.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Hans Juergen Eberdorfer] “Since there is no “Export Selected Composition” button we have to clean up the whole project by hand first in order to save a single composition and it’s footage.”

There’s not an “export selected composition” feature per se, but Reduce project comes close. From the linked page in the manual:

To remove unselected compositions and unused footage items from selected compositions in the Project panel, choose File > Reduce Project. This command is available only when the Project panel is active.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events