Hey, just looking for info on some hardware I can get for my PC to really increase my productivity in aftereffects. Where I attended school, we used a Targa. So that's all I really know. I'm am very interested in lessening render time and preview time for effects. Maybe to be a little more specific, I am not looking for something that has all its own realtime fancy effects, but something with will accelerate the core of aftereffects itself. Am I asking too much? Oh, I work on PC's by the way.
After FX (as well as almost all other motion FX applications) uses software rendering - about the only thing you can do to speed up the render times is to throw as many fast processors you can at it .....a dual-capable PC at least, or a "render farm" with networked render nodes at best.
For doing "realtime hardware DVE" effects on video clips such as page-turns, spinning cubes, realtime color correction, wipes/fades, etc., you would want to look at a video I/O board from a manufacturer such as Pinnacle, Matrox - but remember, these won't do anything to speed-up programs such as AE, combustion or Boris.....
Another way you can speed things up is to learn the most efficient workflows and tools to use -and learn to "fake" effects using less "calculation intensive" approaches in the software.
KIWI
Actually there are some accelerator boards for AE ..Media100 bought ICEfx and there was another one but I can;t recall what it was called. ICE was or is a set of plugins but it also accelrated common functions in AE. otuside of that Really fast harddrives and a disk array and as much ram as you can get will do alot for AE.
IceFX boards are no longer made, although you may be able to find one on ebay or something........
Current dual-cpu machines are just as fast if not faster than the Ice boards were for final rendering......The Ice boards were really cool for speeding-up interactivity in the application on previewing blurs, "lightblasts" and such-
As far as rendering NTSC-resolution frames, 1GB RAM should be more than adequate -any more will (probably) not improve render performance.
KIWI
IceFX boards are no longer made
Actually it looks liek it is still a viable product that isnow owned by Media100 and they are selling them.
cool - I looked on the M100 Site but couldn't find it.
Ice was the (shiznit) a few years back, but I still have to strongly suggest that the money is better-spent on CPU's.
So here's the deal -look at the benchmarks
http://media100.com/ice\_benchmarks.asp
Let's (for arguement's sake) just say that a 3Ghz Xeon is 6 times faster than a 450Mhz G4. (since this is what is being used in their After Effects comparison)
So now, the "unaccelerated times" for After Effects are (roughly) six times faster than they were at the time of the benchmarks.
Now add the second CPU - Now you are now 12 times faster.
Now, your rendering frames considderably faster "in software" than if you were to use this $6000 PCI card THAT ONLY ACCELERATES AE , (some)MEDIA100 AND (some) AVID.
Whether a PC or Mac user, your $6K seems much better spent on (more versatile) computing hardware (CPU's, memory, faster drives) than the aging ICE technology
KIWI
Now add the second CPU - Now you are now 12 times faster.
Problem with that is that many plugins won't be accelerated by the second processor or the ice card.. they have to be compiled for Dual or for ICE. FUnctions within Maya should be speedup by both.
So basically at least get the fastest single processor you can get.
mmnm, media 100 supports them horribly.
I would really really think about it before you by them
The whole thing went down hill(ICE) after the buy.
Its a bastard step child the way they act about it. And its too expenive to deal with that kinda attitude from a company.
The two things I like with the ICE boards, are the fast blurs and the lightblur.
BUT
with SHINE and IMAGE lounge plugins(think thats the name).. you;ve got some seriously fast plugins that really, do not require hardware.