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MAC and After Effects

I've been procrastinating on asking this question because it seems like a simple answer but I can't find the answer anywhere else. If I buy a MAC and After effects to go with it (i'll get Motion too, but I'm used to AE) will the plug- ins I have for AE on a PC work with the AE on a MAC? I'd hate to go through the trouble of buying a MAC only to not be able to use all my plug ins for AE. Or, is that MAC/PC compataiblity program called Parallels the answer to this?
 
hmm, ok thanks. I assumed they would simply be compatible, but wasn't sure, I'll contact the vendors and see about it. The only ones I'm really concerned about are Red Giant plug ins.
 
Creative Cow has the answer...

"Nope. Script files for AE can be cross-platform, but in general plug-ins need to be coded for the platform they're used on.

Check with the developer of your particular plug-ins for compatibility, and whether or not your license may allow you to use both platforms without having to pay twice."

As for Red Giant, one need only look at the Trial Download page to see that there are different versions for mac & PC:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/downloads/trial-versions/
 
ok well its good to know before hand. Yes, I'm actually starting to price MAC's now, I need to upgrade anyway, so I figured, hell, why not? I'll have two systems for graphics and editing work, PC and MAc, how can I go wrong? LOL!
 
Well, actually this months' Creative Cow magazine has an article where a guy has done this, uses both PC and MAC to share video files, it shouldn't really be that much of a problem as long as I use a shared/network storage device. But, that's another bridge I'll cross when I get to it.
 
Sharing is one thing.. distributed rendering is a whole other ball of wax.. it can be done, sure.. but it's probably easier when you're on the same platform. Although if you were using AE on both, then that probably wouldn't matter -- BUT I think you have to have any used plugins on all the render machines. might be wrong there, never tried it..
 
I see your point, I guess I'm just leery on abandoning AE on a PC. I could probably do just fine with only a MAC and use Motion and MAC based AE. I've never used Motion, but I hear it's just as good as AE, I've seen the number of Threads on this Motion versus AE issue, so I won't go into it here.
 
I know that Apple lets you exchange OS versions of the same product. After attempting to work with a PC version of AE I learned that by the time I brought clips back into my MAC version of FCP the brightness was all blown out. A later found out that it's a gamma correction issue that is just plain inherit with MAC's and PC's. So you don't want to mix OS platforms. Stick with just one platform for FCP and AE.
 
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