This winter break ended up stretching past 50 days, and work didn’t resume until March, so it felt like the perfect chance to finally learn some new tools.
I used to edit videos in Vegas. It was straightforward enough, and for things like intros and outros I would usually just grab templates online and drop them in. A lot of those templates were made for AE and PR, though, and modifying them in practice was a hassle. So I went ahead and installed the full Adobe 2020 suite and started teaching myself through tutorials on Bilibili.
The problem was that my home PC was still running an i5-6400. Before the Lunar New Year, I had already upgraded it with a 500 GB Hikvision SSD and 24 GB of memory. Combined with the original 8 GB, that brought the system to 32 GB in dual-channel mode. Even so, the moment I opened After Effects, CPU usage would sit at 100%. Add a few more effects and the whole thing would freeze up completely.
At that point, upgrading the motherboard and CPU became unavoidable. I went back and forth for quite a while between the i5-9600KF and the Ryzen 5 3600. In the end, I sided with AMD: 6 cores and 12 threads seemed like the better fit, and rendering should be faster than on the i5. I had originally ordered an MSI Mortar MAX bundle for 1,670 yuan on Pinduoduo, which looked like a very good deal. It was supposed to ship on February 5, but then the shipping date got pushed back to sometime after the 20th. I didn’t want to wait that long, so I canceled it.
Then I found a deal on JD: 100 yuan off orders over 1,299, which brought the final price to 1,699 yuan, and it could ship the same day. I’ll test the setup once everything arrives.
If anyone else is learning these programs, I’d be happy to compare notes and improve together.
Trying Out a Hackintosh
I also spent some time yesterday setting up a Hackintosh. The installation itself went surprisingly smoothly, but two things immediately became annoying.
First, the GTX 1050 Ti only works with macOS 10.13.6. If I want to install 10.15, I have to rely on the integrated graphics instead. Second, for some reason the wireless card was stuck at 10 Mbps, and I couldn’t change it.
The fix is simple in theory: replace the GPU and Wi-Fi card with models that work out of the box. In reality, that just means spending more money. I’ve already done enough tinkering for now, so I’m leaving it as it is.
Renewing the Server
I also renewed the cloud server for another three years. That cost 1,780 yuan, which honestly feels pretty expensive, but this is one thing I really don’t want to keep messing with.