Hi Guys,

Thank you - I really appreciate you taking the time out to answer a question that has alredy been asked 100+ times!

Yeah, most work will be keying and tracking, and then dropping the output into footage of various sets. - As far as special effects go, we probably want to use pre-keyed stock footage items, or make our own. A little fire here, some smoke there (maybe some lasers - but they should not be too intensive). It is just that at the moment, I am sitting with two MAC's at the office, and I render TGA sequences from them, and it takes very long. 20secons of video (Keyed and Twixtor'ed) takes around 30-45-60 minutes. So I have split the workload between both machines, and queued up multiple render jobs to run overnight.

By the way, out of interrest, the current specs of the MAC's are:

MAC 1

After Effects CS6 with latest automatic update

MAC OS X 10.8.1

Source footage - MOV Files direct from Samurai Recording device (ProRes HQ) - Then to TGA sequences as intermediate renders

Twixtor is the only third party software installed for AE

CPU - Processor  3,1 GHz Intel Core i5

Cores - 4

MEM - Memory  16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

GPU - Graphics  AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB

One internal 1TB drive

The MAC's are connected to a Gigabit switch and the server they connect to runs only 1 2TB spinning disk. All machines connect at 1Gbps

I am just hoping to speed up render times with the new machine

Pierre

HI,

I seem to get that feeling, the more posts I read. AE does its work a certain way, and throwing hardware at it will only increase the output so much....

Oh well, Ill take the quotes I have, pick and mix thorugh them and see wht I can come up with. Funny thing though... The specs I mentioned earlier, came to around R20 000 on the quote I got, a got another quote now from someone else for R53 000!! thats crazy - I have no idea what such major hardware will be used for here! Hell....I'll buy 6 - Holywood - here we come!

Pierre

Hi,

While asking around about hardware and GPU's etc, I was sent htis link - with specific reminder to note the last paragraph:

http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/2012/09/04/exclusive-technology-preview-of -adobe-premiere-pro-unveiled-at-ibc/

"* Testing was performed by AMD using a test project provided by Adobe in XDCAM-EX format, 31 seconds, 1280×1080, 29.97fps with export to H.264 format, max render quality. With OpenCL (GPU acceleration) enabled, the export took 20.8 seconds. With CPU only, the export took 381.2 seconds. Test system was a desktop PC with an AMD Phenom™ II X6 1090T processor at 3.2 GHz with 8 GB 133 MHz DDR RAM, AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 graphics with 3GB of 384-bit GDDR5 video RAM, and Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit (GRS-2)"

But, I guess that it all depends on what effects etc they had on the clip mentioned - Twixtor and such will still play a large role in the final render speed.

Pierre

Hi,

Ok, I said I would put a final spec together, just out of interrest if there are any comments.

We will use the Machine for AE, Premier, and general office work.

.

So, reading above, this should be more than enough than we need for now, with the ability to perform more effects, if and when we need them.

I am looking into the Render Farm set up for CS6 (I have another post around that one) and Ill probably get 2 PC's of the above specs. I hope this will make a difference in my render time, but since Twixtor and Keylight are involved, I am not expecting miracles, just a bit better!

Pierre

Thanks,

Ill go check them out now :-)

Pierre