Adobe After Effects- Rendering Performance on 2.4GHZ MacBook?

[Ryuukumori]

I am in the works of making a Japanese movie with some cool effects that I see easiest to work with Adobe After Effects.

Performance-wise, how well is rendering? How about the whole program in general on the MB?

I am just used to the Windows version after using it a couple times, and really interested in how it might work on Mac. Thanks.

 

[the vj]

I have a mac book pro 17" 2.4 dual core.

After effects runs incredible good there. Now, there is a a multicore option in the preferences, use that to get faster render time. The same in Windows.

The multicore option will ask for 800MB per processor, so it would be good to upgrade your machine up to 4GB of ram, more than 5GB is a waste of time.

But I believe you are all set there. I would get an external monitor and external keyboard and mouse to feel more as a desktop.

I would add an extrenal FW800 hard drive to run the project from there.

That is it.

 

[Asnyers]

I have a mac book pro 17" 2.4 dual core.

After effects runs incredible good there. Now, there is a a multicore option in the preferences, use that to get faster render time. The same in Windows.

The multicore option will ask for 800MB per processor, so it would be good to upgrade your machine up to 4GB of ram, more than 5GB is a waste of time.

But I believe you are all set there. I would get an external monitor and external keyboard and mouse to feel more as a desktop.

I would add an extrenal FW800 hard drive to run the project from there.

That is it.

The OP likes to know how it runs on a macbook, not a macbook pro... But as rendering is a CPU task, you're right to compare both of them.

The new alu macbooks don't have a firewire port.... USB-drive will do just fine. To answer the OP's question, the program runs very well on the new macbooks. If your not sure performance-wise, look for a few benchmarks.

 

[mBox]

The new alu macbooks don't have a firewire port.... USB-drive will do just fine...

Im using a 400 to 800 converter cable that works great with my GRAID2 1TB drive (17"Uni).
I didnt think the loss of the 400 would be such a big deal. Its a 20 dollar cable
A few simple tips on rendering with After Effects.
After setting a render que, select a comp and make sure it shows a frame.
Then press your caps-lock to kill display process. This way you wont have the machine over-tasking.
I work with 1080p outputs mostly but I render to QT None which is another tip.
Separate compressions if you can. Using any third-party compressors right out of AE tends to take much longer than doing it with the actual third-party app. An example would be to render to Uncompressed then taking the file into Sorenson Squeeze or MainConcept for final codec output.

Happy Rendering

 

[Chris7]

Im using a 400 to 800 converter cable that works great with my GRAID2 1TB drive (17"Uni).
I didnt think the loss of the 400 would be such a big deal. Its a 20 dollar cable

To clarify, are you able to get FW800 performance though a FW400 port just by usig an adaptor? If you've tested the read/write speed to your external FW800 hard drive, I'd be curious what it is. Sorry to be off topic here -- I was initally looking for an extimate regarding how rendering AE would be on my 2.2GHz MBP...
Thanks,
Chris

 

[mBox]

To clarify, are you able to get FW800 performance though a FW400 port just by usig an adaptor? If you've tested the read/write speed to your external FW800 hard drive, I'd be curious what it is. Sorry to be off topic here -- I was initally looking for an extimate regarding how rendering AE would be on my 2.2GHz MBP...
Thanks,
Chris

No prob. If your external device is a 400 then itll be a 400 going to the 800 port on the Mac. Same rule if your daisy chaining devices.
Honestly rendering HD formatted files to a disk doesnt required speed. Its when your trying to Preview off a disk usign varying documents e.g. PSD, jpegs and *.ai files that can slow down a system specially a MacBook.
most of my work is done on a MacPro with 16GB of RAM and an Apple RAID card. At that point any rendering tests between my MacBookPro and MacPro is all CPU.