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1. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 10:05 AM (in response to kandiimann)There are probably a lot of other things you should take into consideration besides After Effects alone. What other applications will you run? How do you intend to use this machine?
And for AE, the size of the SSD would depend on the H&V resolution of your footage, its duration & frame rate, and how complicated your comps will eventually get: hundreds of layers? 30-minute-long comps at 4K and 59.94fps? Finally, it's generally wiser to make the hard drive the home for OS & Applications, and use the SSD for user files... and in AE's case, the bigger the better.
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2. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 24, 2014 10:17 AM (in response to Dave LaRonde)it will just be the OS, AE, photoshop and illustrator. And ill work with 1080p footage and yea it could probably go up to a couple hundred layers.
and are you sure? i just read " the OS is mostly read from the disk at boot, the applications are mostly read from the disk at application start, and the cache files are read and written during program run time. There is very little overlap."
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3. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 10:30 AM (in response to kandiimann)Yes, you're right about the boot and application start.
And that's just the point for putting user files on the SSD. SSD's are far faster at reading & writing than a hard drive... with no physical wear & tear. And when you're reading a hundred layers of HD footage and a hundred more layers of Photoshop & Illustrator documents -- for each and every frame of your AE composition -- you stand to boost the machine's performance significantly with shorter read times multiplied by 200... to say nothing of the absence of physical wear & tear.
You might also consider putting media files on an external hard drive.
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4. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 10:30 AM (in response to kandiimann)Yes, you're right about the boot and application start.
And that's just the point for putting user files on the SSD. SSD's are far faster at reading & writing than a hard drive... with no physical wear & tear. And when you're reading a hundred layers of HD footage and a hundred more layers of Photoshop & Illustrator documents -- for each and every frame of your AE composition -- you stand to boost the machine's performance significantly with shorter read times multiplied by 200... to say nothing of the absence of physical wear & tear.
You might also consider putting media files on an external hard drive.
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5. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 24, 2014 10:51 AM (in response to Dave LaRonde)so even though you import video and photoshop files to after affects, when rendering frames it still has to go back to the original file location on the disk? i was under the impression for some reason that a file's only read from the disk once when importing it to AE and that once you import it into AE it isnt read from the disk anymore.. almost like the file was copied into AE.. so when rendering it's continually being read from the original file location right?
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6. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 11:25 AM (in response to kandiimann)Ah, the memory, she's not so good when it comes to cases of how AE deals individual layers within Illustrator or Photoshop documents when they're animated.
But for me, a hundred layers of video would be PLENTY of motivation to use an SSD for media files. Even fifty. Or twenty-five.
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7. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 11:25 AM (in response to kandiimann)Ah, the memory, she's not so good when it comes to cases of how AE deals individual layers within Illustrator or Photoshop documents when they're animated.
But for me, a hundred layers of video would be PLENTY of motivation to use an SSD for media files. Even fifty. Or twenty-five.
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8. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 24, 2014 11:36 AM (in response to Dave LaRonde)ok so is there anything i have to do so AE reads the file from the original location rather than the memory? and by the way, is this memory we'r taking about in RAM?
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9. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 11:55 AM (in response to kandiimann)Actually, I AM talking about reading the file from the original location, which is the location where it's stored, on a hard disk drive an SSD.
If AE , as you worked on a project, had to store all the project's media files in memory -- aka RAM -- it would be an absolute nightmare. If you thought AE was a memory hog before, you would not have seen anything! Imagine storing 20 layers of HD video in memory! Yipes! You'd run out of RAM so fast it would make your head spin.
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10. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 24, 2014 12:27 PM (in response to Dave LaRonde)yea i guess that was a silly question XD i guess i could get 2 256GB SSDs instead of 1 big 1. 1 SSD for OS, AE and cache, and the other only for media thats being used in a project and the HDD for media that MAY be used in a future project and other stuff. that sounds good right? this would mean instead of having 500 GB for cache id sacrifice half so i could have another drive for media, is this a good idea? is 256 plenty for cache?
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11. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 24, 2014 12:59 PM (in response to kandiimann)You might be short-changing youself on the cashe on the SSD. That depends entirely on the nature of your work. 20-minute animations? Definitely. 30-second spots? Nope.
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12. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 24, 2014 1:06 PM (in response to Dave LaRonde)yea i'll have to give it some thought, thanks for the advice dave!
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13. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 29, 2014 9:13 AM (in response to Dave LaRonde)hey dave, you said I might also consider putting media files on an external hard drive. would a normal external harddrive connected by USB 3.0 be sufficient, or will i get much better performance using an internal SSD?
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14. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
Dave LaRonde Apr 29, 2014 11:04 AM (in response to kandiimann)Compared to an external drive, the read-write speed will be faster on an SSD.
Compared to an external drive,the cost per gigabyte will be much higher for an SSD.
There's your tradeoff. Is the extra money worth it? Only you can decide that.
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15. Re: will a 256 gig SSD be enough for caches or should i go for 500?
kandiimann Apr 29, 2014 11:13 AM (in response to Dave LaRonde)cool thanks!

