What is the best computer to use for After Effects?

[AMAX]

Hi,

I bought the latest greatest 10K apple "trashcan" computer and got to say i'm not to happy with the performance with AE. Talking to some of my peers it seems like the 12core is not as good for AE as the chips are slower. A lot of them are switching back to PCs. I like and used to MAC my self and don't really want to switch to PC but i will if i have to. The question i have is what would be the best setup for running After Effects if not concerned with the budget. I'm willing to pay more $$ to get more responsive performance. Like running a 3-4 monitors along with a preview monitor. Using particular and other third part plugins and working with 4k and 6k?

all help is appreciated. Thanks!

[Szalam]

The After Effects team is working on redoing the core code of After Effects so that it can be a more modern, multithreaded app. So, I wouldn't toss away your new Apple just yet.

There are some things you can do to make AE work better for you. What specific things aren't working for you?

There's a bug with AE on El Capitan that makes it so cached previews don't play back real time. There is a workaround for this and the fix is targeted to come in the next update. Info in Todd's post here.

If you would like to render with multiprocessing, you can do that with After Effects CC 2014. The AE team has recommended working in CC 2015 to take advantage of the snappier user interface, improved expression handling, etc. and then to render in CC 2014. AE CC 2014 can open projects created in AE CC 2015 with no problem.

Also, make sure you're updated to 13.7 if you're trying to use CC 2015 - many issues have been fixed since version 13.5 introduced parts of the new code architecture.

That being said, you might consider getting an older Mac Pro running Mavericks with a high clock speed on the processor. (Or a Windows machine with a high clock speed. Windows 7 is pretty solid with CC 2015.)

[AMAX]

See, it’s not that’s i’m totally disappointed in the workflow with AE and new Mac Pro. It’s just not as good of an upgrade as I thought it would have been. I upgraded from an old Mac Pro tower that was maxed out on the Ram, SSD drives and had a NVIDIA Quadro 4000 card with CUDA. So the upgrade made it a little easier to work on some projects but not that dramatic of a difference if compared with a price tag. My biggest issue with new Macs is that i cannot connect more them 2 screens to it. And it’s not only my Macs issue. Most of my peers are experiencing the same problem. Then that there is no way (that i know of) to upgrade to CUDA video card. I know about the issue with the CC2015 and El Capitan… i actually started that thread that you are referring too. I understand that’s gonna be fixed at some point. My overall issue is that with all the tech available i want to see what pros think the best option for AE heavy workflow is. Not operating system as much as the hardware. Maybe building costume PC would be better. Combining best (for AE) Video card, CPU, ram together in one package…. or maybe there is something that is out there that is available as a package that would work great with after effects in particular.

[Jean-Marc_Fueri]

That's great software development...use our 2015 version to work but render with our 2014 version...well..not impressed. Actually very disappointed by Adobe. I pay a monthly subscription to After Effects just to see my CPU being used at 30-40% at best. Whoever decided to scrap multi-threading right at the time where multi-cores and threads are becoming more and more available should be given a genius medal.

[jonathanh97724603]

I agree. What operation could be more multi-threading friendly than rendering video? There are lots of ways to divide the work between threads. As a computer engineer who dabbles in video editing for fun, I am puzzled at why a so-called "industry standard" video editing software in 2018 still hasn't started multi-threading.

[P.M.B]

jonathanh97724603  wrote

I am puzzled at why a so-called "industry standard" video editing software in 2018 still hasn't started multi-threading.

Because After Effects is not video editing software and it's not for rendering out final videos.  That aside I too am baffled why it does not utilize multiple cores or threads

[Rick Gerard]

Multithreading pixel processing is not easy. The entire architecture of the process must be re-designed. However, if it's just rendering that concerns you invest in RenderGarden | by Mekajiki. Utilize one or all of the available cores in your system and keep working in AE while you are churning out frames with little or no measurable effect on performance. If you charge by the hour it will pay for it's self the first day you use it. In most of my projects, I'm getting a 40% to 60% reduction in render times.

[shiznit1994]

Step one, throw that over priced hunk of junk in the trash... For what you spent on that Apple you could have built yourself a rather nice PC with upgrade ability.. where is a like to a really nice video on what you should do. I have a similar build and it works amazing!!

http://www.surfacedstudio.com/blog/best-computer-for-after-effects

I hope this helps.

[Rick Gerard]

Properly configured any machine should work well with AE. My personal choice and the choice of more than 57% of the users surveyed by Motionographer were using a Mac, only 29% are on Windows only machines. I'm using both. Let's not start a system war. Let's solve the problem.

The current version of AE (2015 x13.07.124) is not where it should be performance or UI wise but CC 2014 is working plenty fine for most folks. As long as you have your machine properly configured and you're using standard types of footage you should be able to get things to work just fine. As Adobe works through the entirely new rendering engine and UI interface performance will go up. Any good machine with components that will last will cost you money. Mac's hold their resale value much better than PC's and way way better than homebuilts. Nobody comes close to Apple's customer service. Ask Dell or HP to replace the power supply and controller on a 4 year old laptop that is out of warranty and see how fast they offer to do it for under $200 ($135 to be exact). No matter what workstation you choose you should refer to the system requirements, analyze your standard workflow and plan for the future. I usually hold on to my machines for three years, sell them and upgrade to the latest and greatest that most closely fits my projected production workflow. Pick the OS that you prefer and the best hardware you can afford, take care of it, and do good work.

[bogiesan]

My trashcan works quite well for my AE needs. Without knowing more about your specific needs, my expectations might be far lower than yours.

l've been using AE since it was CoSA and I've got a set of editing habits and interface settings left over from those bygone days. I work at draft rez for hours or days until I'm ready to do some tests. I render dozens of tests at medium rez. Then I render only specific sections at full rez for critical evaluation. Then we do full length medium rez studies before moving on to full rez output of entire movies.

The other thing I've figured out over the decades is that I my animation is always perfect. This leads me to many hundreds of hours waiting for full rez rendering only to discover the run was a complete waste of time. I have come to know, deep in my heart, that every keyframe and every Bezier handle is very likely a terrible mistake. Humbling.

[shiznit1994]

This is not about a system war, he is unhappy with his mac.. and he should be since he is over paying for PC components anyways, i5 or i7 processor, NVidia graphics cards, ram... The motherboards and case are the only things that are not PC parts..

You can spend $1500 on a mac that you can't fix yourself (On campus I watch 15+ IMac's crash within 2 weeks of each other) and can't upgrade yourself... OR you can get a AWESOME PC for $1500 (if you know how to build one yourself (Honestly not that hard) that you can upgrade as you need.

He asked what other options are out there. This is a fair cost comparison, I have worded on both. I love the OS on the MAC, BUT when I am doing high demand documents especially when using after effects a PC out performs dollar for dollar hands down. 

[AMAX]

shiznit1994 hit the nail on the head. I don’t particularly care for MAC or PC. I like Mac because i’ve been using it for over 12 years, but i have build my own PCs before in the past. And i know you can’t really build ur own MAC as well.. unless u build a “hackintosh”. To summarize the question i had, I just wanted to know if people knew what options perform better then others with AE. I have heard that there are some platforms that are PC based that are really good with AE because of their chips (that macs don’t have). Have anyone heard of anything like that? I’m not talking about a computer you can buy at BestBuy. Or maybe if I would build a system from scratch, what components would work best with AE. What chip? What clock speed? what graphic hard? any motherboards people would recommend over the others?

The point is, i want to try to get or build the ultimate AE machine!

[BartonGarrett256]

‌The premiere forum has a page on building or having built editing machines, it's not too different.  I've built my last three computers, it's easy to do.  You should have the skill set to do so, it's not that far removed from properly configuring and troubleshooting your computer. 

You can get an awful lot more computer in a PC for the same cash outlay.  Apples sure is pretty, but who cares. 

Thank gaming, that market is driving the hardware. We get hand me downs.  I suspect there are more teenage boys with high end gaming computers in suburban Dallas than Ae users on the whole planet.

[shiznit1994]

In that case for the "BEST" you will need to build your PC around this Graphics Card NVIDIA's Quadro M6000 IT is the cream of the crop for After effects! My dream machine starts with this card!! There are several PC part pickers sites where you can start with that card and it will show you what parts go with it.

Adobe After Effects CC - 3D Graphics Workflow|NVIDIA

Also, Why Is this being monitored? There is nothing hateful here!

[Szalam]

shiznit1994 wrote:

In that case for the "BEST" you will need to build your PC around this Graphics Card NVIDIA's Quadro M6000

Considering how little AE uses the GPU, why you would build a computer for AE around a specific GPU? For the most part, the only thing in AE that really uses the GPU is the ray-traced renderer, but AE's ray-traced renderer is considered obsolete and is not seeing further development. If one plans to use plugins that use the GPU like Element 3d, 3d Invigorator, ShapeShifter (and I highly recommend getting at least one of them) or even Red Giant Universe, you should get a decent GPU, but you are overpaying if you get a Quadro. With Element, for example, you get much more bang for your buck with a GTX 970 than any Quadro.

shiznit1994 wrote:

Also, Why Is this being monitored? There is nothing hateful here!

The spam filter on the Adobe forums is a bit overzealous, especially for newer users. It's not a person moving your posts to moderation; it's a computer algorithm. Its over-eagerness to moderate posts is annoying, but it's a significant improvement over the floods of spam we had for a couple of months there.

[shiznit1994]

It would be in my Dream Machine because of the 3D capabilities with MAYA, CINAMA 4D and others (I enjoy playing with these and hope to do more with them in the future). It seems like an out there video card, but it can handle 4 monitors where as most video cards only handle 2 and it is and a host of other greatness (I am also a gamer and it is very shiny!). And we are talking dream machine! Not what the average VFX lover can afford. Your right GTX970 is an amazing card and will work great! If we are talking practical I would for sure go with the GTX970 (For whatever reason went from a 2GB to 4GB of GPU memory things just worked better),  the Best I7, with a really powerful CPU Cooler, almost any gaming motherboard is perfect, and get your hands on and as much ram as you can stuff into it, I have a SSD Raid setup for my Operating Software and an SSD just for Adobe Cache. The Dedicated drive for the Adobe cache was a recent addition and was SUPER helpful!!

My System cost me $1250 and I have added some RAM and the Cache hard drive and I am still under $1500, for a really nice Tower.

Specs:

motherboard - Gigabyte x79-up4

CPU - i7-4820K

32 GB RAM (can handle 64GB)

GPU- MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770

2- Samsung EVO 840 set in raid for OS

1- Samsung EVO 850 for Adobe Cache

1- Toshiba 3TB hard drive, storage

At Cleveland State they have 24 brand new IMac's, my/this machine leaves them in the dust!

[Szalam]

shiznit1994 wrote:

It would be in my Dream Machine because of the 3D capabilities with MAYA, CINAMA 4D and others

Some 3d apps (such as Cinema 4D) don't use the GPU for much either unless you use a third-party GPU renderer.

[shiznit1994]

Sorry.. "Other" Should have said "Every sexy plugin your going to want to use!"  LOL 😛 I wish I had more money for plugins... Of topic, is there a recourse for learning how to build your own plugins? All I can find is "Learn (place CODE here)..

[Szalam]

For AE?  After Effects Developer Center | Adobe Developer Connection

Forum: After Effects SDK

[shiznit1994]

Thank You Szalam!!

[BartonGarrett256]

‌I'd not use a computer I was doing customer work on for gaming, that's a dangerous thing.

Mixing memory is also not, in my opinion, good practice best to bite the bullet and fill it up at the start.

[shiznit1994]

My last PC lasted my 6 years, Gaming and Graphics work, never had an issue. (another bonus to PC, As long as everything is backed up on an external drive you can fix it if it breaks. In terms of memory as long as you buy the same model number every time you will have no issues, as long as you install it in pairs!

[AMAX]

So after all said, it seems like building my own PC would be a best option. It's sad though, looks like Mac is loosing it's creative market.

I ran some comps on the NewEgg for the custom PC with a better i7 chip at 4.0GHz, 64gb DDR4 ram, Nvidia Quadro m5000 video card,  liquid cooling, case…bluh bluh… and it all came under 4K!!! So i don’t understand why my Mac pro is 10K!? How is 12Core at 2.7GHz beneficial for the price tag? Or is it better for other things, just not for AE yet?

I like the OSx, so i wish there would be an easy way to install the OSx on a custom built computer. Is there?

What windows version do you guys use?

[shiznit1994]

I have Window 10. I loved windows 7, windows 8 made me cry.. I know you can install windows on a MAC, but I dont think you can put OSx on a PC. I would consider switching if you could. I think Apple has nailed the user experience. I do favor windows only because it is way easier on the gamers (mac is a nightmare with games...).

[Szalam]

vfxjunky wrote:

It's sad though, looks like Mac is loosing it's creative market.

This isn't a recent development. It started when they stopped exhibiting at NAB a few years ago.

Soon after, they released Final Cut X which initiated a mass exodus from Final Cut to Premiere Pro because professionals hated the new Final Cut. Apple has since fixed the issues with Final Cut X, but the damage was done. Professionals loved the features of Premiere Pro and weren't going to go back.

Then Apple didn't refresh the Mac Pro line for ages. When they finally did update with the "trash cans", professionals said, "What?!? These aren't what we want either! They don't fit our workflow."

Apple seems to be much more focused on the casual user (and the iPhone) and less on the professionals who kept them afloat for years!

Sorry, it makes me a bit upset. I used to love Macs, but I'm mostly Windows now due to these sorts of shenanigans.

vfxjunky wrote:

So i don’t understand why my Mac pro is 10K!? How is 12Core at 2.7GHz beneficial for the price tag? Or is it better for other things, just not for AE yet?

You're paying for dual Xeon processors in the Mac Pro (and the Apple name...). Multiply your cores by your clock speed and compare that result. This might make a difference if you render in CC 2014 with multiprocessing and it will make a difference when AE finally releases the new renderer in a future version. It definitely matters for rendering out of Cinema 4D or other CPU-based 3d renderers.

However, I'm not saying that the Mac Pro is a good choice. Go on Dell's website and price out a dual Xeon machine and you can get a much more powerful system than the best Mac Pro for significantly less money. (You can also customize it a lot more to your specs. And, yes, you can get Thunderbolt 2 in a Dell.)

Does that make sense? I'm always afraid to be over or under explaining. And a text-based medium means I can't see facial expressions to know if I'm communicating well enough.

vfxjunky wrote:

... i wish there would be an easy way to install the OSx on a custom built computer. Is there?

Apple will tell you no. The "Hackintosh" community will tell you yes.

I will tell you not to bother.

Apple's latest few OS's have had pretty bad starts (basic things like Wi-Fi have been messed up) and they keep messing things up in AE. Apple changed something in Yosemite and AE's RAM preview no longer worked right in CC 2014 and prior. Luckily, Adobe already had a new preview system that they could put in CC 2015. Apple changed a display API in El Capitan and now AE CC 2015 can't play in real time on that OS without a weird workaround. It's just frustrating.

Remember, I'm telling you this as someone who really likes Apple. I have an iPhone 6S+, an Apple Watch, a Mac Pro (cheese grater style), and several MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs around the house. I'm not a Windows fanboy at all. I worked tech support for a major PC manufacturer in the days of Windows Vista, so I know how bad Windows used to be. (I won't say who I worked for, only that their initials were HP )

I'm just telling you the current state of things. The next update to AE should work pretty well on El Capitan. A future version of AE should take full advantage of a multicore, multiprocessor system. Hopefully Apple will eventually update their professional machines with features that professionals want and maybe their prices will get a bit better...but for right now, I wouldn't buy a Mac for professional work. More bang for less buck in PCs.

vfxjunky wrote:

What windows version do you guys use?

Windows 7 is great. Very stable. Works wonderfully well with CC 2014 and CC 2015 for me.