Any feedback from AEcs3 testers?

[zglows]

i'd like to know this!!

[beenyweenies]

can anyone give feedback from AEcs3? really curious about the new features like multi thread and caching, does old plugin work also?

Early on I came out swinging at AE CS3 because it seemed many of the features I know people are looking for were missing. Since I've had time to look closer and play with it directly, I really like the new version. Many of the features I thought were missing were either not in the early press releases I saw or were named in ways that I didn't catch them. Mylenium is probably laughing at my reversal in attitude right now, but he is right - the new version is a major release, more so than v7.0 ever was.

The speed increases are evident, the puppet tool is a lot of fun (though my line of work wouldn't call for it much), shape layers etc. It's definitely worth the cost of admission. I would certainly say it's a critical update for anyone on a mac, especially with 4 or more processors. You will have some serious speed boosts that by themselves make the upgrade worth it.

I will post more specific information once I've had time to poke around, I'm in the middle of a huge 3D project right now.

[Mylenium]

Mylenium is probably laughing at my reversal in attitude right now, but he is right - the new version is a major release, more so than v7.0 ever was.

Nope, I don't. We may clash every now and then, but in the greater scheme of things I respect you deeply for one single reason - unlike some fanboy, you can always give solid reasons why you don't like something and you have a technical understanding and insight that gives your arguments weight. As for the rest - we all are evangelists of our favorite toys and sometimes that gets in the way of objectivity, but hey, that's not unherad of elsewhere, either...

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

can anyone give feedback from AEcs3? really curious about the new features like multi thread and caching, does old plugin work also?

To answer the most important question first: If you are on a Mac and run AE CS3 natively on intel, your plugins, which were for PPC, won't work. In that case you need to run AE under Rosetta. However, this is not as critical as it may sound - most developers have announced adapted versions in time for the final release, some already are available.

The multiprocessing is quite nice if you have a multicore machine, but you have to realise that it requires lots of RAM. You may not be able to use the full potential if you don't meet this criteria.

As a guy doing info graphics, schematics and label overlays on animations a lot, my favorite feature are shape layers, which I think are the other most noteworthy new feature, in particular since they are vector-based and thus never loose quality.

The puppet tool is okay and provides a nice alternative to other warping tools, but don't let yourself fool by Adobe's advertising - whil things such as IK animation are certainly possible with it, it still takes quite some time to set it up.

Mylenium

[chandro]

Thanks for the response! my computer spec
pentium D 3.00 Ghz
2.00 Gb of Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 6600

as a newbie i really dont know if this would benefit for that features.

does installing the new Cs3 would require to uninstall the older version?

[Mylenium]

Thanks for the response! my computer spec
pentium D 3.00 Ghz
2.00 Gb of Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 6600

as a newbie i really dont know if this would benefit for that features.

No, unfortunately 2GB is not enough to yield any substantial gains using multiprocessing. You will be able to run 2 instances by setting your memory usage in the prefs accordingly, but there's a good chance that your system will choke due to the high RAM consumption, which will negate all advantages. 4GB would be much, much better.


does installing the new Cs3 would require to uninstall the older version?

No, you can leave the old version on your machine. There are no technical reasons requiring an uninstall and even the license agreement allows you to have all previous versions on your harddisk, even if it's an update.

Mylenium

[chandro]

No, unfortunately 2GB is not enough to yield any substantial gains using multiprocessing. You will be able to run 2 instances by setting your memory usage in the prefs accordingly, but there's a good chance that your system will choke due to the high RAM consumption, which will negate all advantages. 4GB would be much, much better. Mylenium
thanks for the info, im using windows xp 32 bit, do i have to change it to 64 bit to able to use 4Gb of RAm? im not really good in tech stuff hope you can help me with this issue..
really confuse

[beenyweenies]

thanks for the info, im using windows xp 32 bit, do i have to change it to 64 bit to able to use 4Gb of RAm? im not really good in tech stuff hope you can help me with this issue..
really confuse

I know this is not an entirely "helpful" comment, but I think this new version of After Effects leaves little reason left to use a PC at all. My studio is currently phasing out the last of our PCs because of reliability, cost of constant upgrades, overall performance and the benefits CS3 will offer. The real sparkling advantage of AE CS3 is the multiprocessing, and the Mac Pro's 4 cores and OSX support for up to 16GB of RAM really smoke. Maya also works more reliably on the Mac now, another concern of ours for years that is irrelevant now. Plus there's the whole Parallels/BootCamp dual boot option, which really makes PCs obsolete IMO.

I know many people would argue these points (I would have myself a few years ago) but seriously - a reliable quad processor PC (Boxx or equivelant) will easily cost you more than $4,000US, whereas the same exact machine specs in a Mac will cost $2800 or so. In case that doesn't seem significant, with that $1,200+ you saved, you could load your Mac up with a whopping 16GB of OWC RAM.


If you can't afford a Mac or just love your PC, the best bet is to upgrade to XP 64bit, up your RAM to 4GB, and hope for some modest speed gain since you have 2 processor cores, but honestly I don't know that the difference will be incredible. Much like a render farm, it's the quantity of processors and RAM that will determine results.

[beaker]

So how much ram is AE allow you to use now? Last time I used it the limit was 2 gig. It's still a 32 bit application isn't it? So it should only be limited to 2.5-3 gig of ram. Can it use the full 4 gig of ram if you run it under emulation on Win64?

[Mylenium]

So how much ram is AE allow you to use now? Last time I used it the limit was 2 gig. It's still a 32 bit application isn't it? So it should only be limited to 2.5-3 gig of ram. Can it use the full 4 gig of ram if you run it under emulation on Win64?

Ever since AE 7 it uses full 4GB on x64 systems. On Macs that limit is 3 GB for AE 7, 3.5 GB for CS3. Considering that each instance of the BG processes can have it's own 4GB, you could in theory max out 32 GB of RAM on a dual Xeon quadcore system, but anything in the range between 8 and 16 GB will suffice.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

I know this is not an entirely "helpful" comment, but I think this new version of After Effects leaves little reason left to use a PC at all. My studio is currently phasing out the last of our PCs because of reliability, cost of constant upgrades, overall performance and the benefits CS3 will offer. The real sparkling advantage of AE CS3 is the multiprocessing, and the Mac Pro's 4 cores and OSX support for up to 16GB of RAM really smoke. Maya also works more reliably on the Mac now, another concern of ours for years that is irrelevant now. Plus there's the whole Parallels/BootCamp dual boot option, which really makes PCs obsolete IMO.

I know many people would argue these points (I would have myself a few years ago) but seriously - a reliable quad processor PC (Boxx or equivelant) will easily cost you more than $4,000US, whereas the same exact machine specs in a Mac will cost $2800 or so. In case that doesn't seem significant, with that $1,200+ you saved, you could load your Mac up with a whopping 16GB of OWC RAM.


If you can't afford a Mac or just love your PC, the best bet is to upgrade to XP 64bit, up your RAM to 4GB, and hope for some modest speed gain since you have 2 processor cores, but honestly I don't know that the difference will be incredible. Much like a render farm, it's the quantity of processors and RAM that will determine results.

...but then in a way you are contradicting yourself. As I wrote in my reply to beaker, each process can use its own 4GB on x64 systems. XP 64 by itself can handle up to 128 GB of RAM, so at least on that end I don't quite follow your logic. Even more so, since my current machine already supports up to 48 GB of RAM, which is more than a MacPro. ;O)

I would also advise you to not propagate the myth of Macs being cheaper or better price/ value ratio. Macs are expensive as hell here in Germany and just for fun I tried to configure a system comparable to my current dual Xeon quadcore PC system (8 GB RAM, 2x250 GB HDD, 2x24" LCD screens, Quadro FX 5500) in the official Apple online store. The system I picked (Mac Pro dual quadcore, 2x 500 GB HDD, 8 GB RAM, 2x23" Cinema display, Quadro FX 4500) comes in at a whoppin' 9704,99 Euros (includin VAT) which is actually much more expensive than my 2 month old PC. Yet the system already has a less powerful and cheaper graphics card. Wouldn't even dream of getting some other fancies under those conditions.

So in all honesty, where is your advantage in price? I'm not arguing your point that there may be an advantage if you only buy standard Macs as they come fresh out of the factory and are sold a few thousand times a day without any special hardware requirements, but as soon as you start to add custom options, you are moving just in the same price regions.

In addition to that, Apple simply stinks here in Germany. Their support system makes your hair stand on end let alone the fact that you will have a hard time finding reliable resellers/ dealers in the first place (you know, the only Apple product you can find everywhere in "normal" electronics and computer stores are iPods...) It's a miracle people are buying Macs after all when they can't even manage to translate all their webpages to German. Even if you figure in the miserly discounts that you can get at resellers like Gravis, it is simply not worth the effort.

Mylenium

[beaker]

Ever since AE 7 it uses full 4GB on x64 systems. On Macs that limit is 3 GB for AE 7, 3.5 GB for CS3. Considering that each instance of the BG processes can have it's own 4GB, you could in theory max out 32 GB of RAM on a dual Xeon quadcore system, but anything in the range between 8 and 16 GB will suffice.

MyleniumBG process, do you mean launching multiple renders while you work?

[beaker]

I would also advise you to not propagate the myth of Macs being cheaper or better price/ value ratio. God forbid the guy doesn't know that Macs suck in Germany. He is from the States(it says so under his name) and his opinion is based on that POV. Don't go around razzling people just because he doesn't consider the state of computers in every single country around the world.

[Mylenium]

BG process, do you mean launching multiple renders while you work?

AE CS3 will do that for you. As soon as you enable multiprocessing AE will launch at least 1 slave process per core. it will not do anything for interactive work, but greatly speeds up rendering and RAM previews.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

God forbid the guy doesn't know that Macs suck in Germany. He is from the States(it says so under his name) and his opinion is based on that POV. Don't go around razzling people just because he doesn't consider the state of computers in every single country around the world.

Huh? The same machine I mentioned costs 8552 USD (excl. VAT) in the US apple store. That makes 6.370,68 EUR based on today's exchange rate. While it's cheaper, it's not exactly real cheap, don't you agree? So what's the point then of saying Macs are cheaper when the facts give another picture if you objectively compare the specs? Sorry, unless you all are willing to compare systems in a fair manner on a plane playing field instead of resorting to Mac-fanboyism, I'm not willing to give in an inch. Good hardware costs good money and it doesn't matter wheter it is inside an aluminium casing with an apple on it or an ugly standard PC casing. Simple as that.

Mylenium

[hospadam]

Well, i'm too lazy to go on and price configure a machine myself... but I will mention this point.

First, when comparing the prices of Macs vs. Other PCs, never include Apple displays. They're way overpriced (in my opinion), and they always skew the results. I just think it's a more fair comparision to compare JUST the computers, not the displays... since you can buy the displays independently.

Now, even after saying that, the Dell (or other PC) could be cheaper still. I will mention that this usually goes back and forth though... I know that multiple times i've looked at comparable Dell and Macs, and usually they're somewhat close in price, and it does go back and forth.

I'll take your word for it that Apple support sucks in Germany, but in the states, it's rated the #1 tech company, service wise. Also, i don't think you can look at the price of a computer as a strict numbers game. I mean... arguably there are inherant benifits to getting a mac that aren't included in the exact price of the computer?

In anycase... just hoping to point out a few things.

[beenyweenies]

Huh? The same machine I mentioned costs 8552 USD (excl. VAT) in the US apple store. That makes 6.370,68 EUR based on today's exchange rate. While it's cheaper, it's not exactly real cheap, don't you agree? So what's the point then of saying Macs are cheaper when the facts give another picture if you objectively compare the specs? Sorry, unless you all are willing to compare systems in a fair manner on a plane playing field instead of resorting to Mac-fanboyism, I'm not willing to give in an inch. Good hardware costs good money and it doesn't matter wheter it is inside an aluminium casing with an apple on it or an ugly standard PC casing. Simple as that.

Mylenium

Honestly I never really thought about markets outside of the US, and I'm sure you're right in your region-specific counterpoints. The pricing comparison I made was for a specific system (quad-core, 2GB ram, Radeon x1900 card) versus the comparable Boxx machine. Personally I would NEVER buy the extra RAM, monitors or hard drives from Apple, they are way overpriced, I will grant you that. But these items are way overpriced from Dell, Boxx and other PC manufacturers as well. So my approach is to compare base systems, with the intention of upgrading through third party sources (which would cost roughly the same for either the PC or the Mac and therefore shouldn't be factored in). When you just look at the base Mac Pro unit it is cheaper by about $1,200 than an identical Boxx system here in the United States. I assure you my stance has nothing to do with Mac fan-boyism, it's based on cold hard numbers as any responsible studio manager would do. In fact, it's taken several years for me to even warm up to Macs, I hated them for the longest time!

Really the issue boils down to what you are most comfortable on, and your needs. For us, we were spending more time troubleshooting/maintaining our PCs than any other piece of gear in the studio, and that costs money beyond the upfront cost of the computer itself. We've also found the Macs to crash less and offer better reliability all around. One other point (and this is a personal opinion) Apple's products seem to be designed almost obsessively user-oriented, whereas Windows increasingly has become all about enforcing the DRM rights of their corporate partners and patching over the endless security flaws in their software, to the detriment of the user experience. On a PC I increasingly feel like MS is watching me/telling me how to behave, and I'm not even doing anything wrong.

This is NOT meant to open the whole PC vs. Mac can-o-worms, just a personal opinion that made our decision to go all-Mac that much easier. Others will not agree with my opinion, and I can respect that.

That said, if you still love Windows you can run Windows and OSX on the same Mac, which is a major point in the Mac's favor. So for us, the CS3 upgrade gave us the final push to just ditch our PCs.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.