Re: Hardware solutions - I'm clueless!

it would also help to know which version of ae you are using (as seen in the splash/about ae screen, like 8.0.2) and the versions of the third-party effects that are giving you trouble...

but for starters, quit ae, then hold down shift-option-command while restarting ae. this should reset the main preference file to the default settings. then go to preferences>previews and disable opengl (uncheck the opengl option) and set preview acceleration to adaptive resolution. then see if you can make it crash.

if the problem seem to only be with third-party effects, look for updates to those effects (trapcode updates can be found at redgiantsoftware.com) and maybe compatibility information for those effects and the version of ae that you are using.

a bad ram configuration can also effect stability. since you have 14gb of ram that means you have some ram of different sizes. to make sure you have the correct configuration you can use the memory slot utilitiy (found in /System/Library/Core Services), it should give you the recommended config for your ram modules.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW