RAM Preview issue

Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone has seen this or can provide some direction for further investigation. This is on a new Mac Pro on which I have just installed FCS
In some projects the RAM preview has no effect on playback performance. After generating a RAM preview, the project will play at the same speed (say 2 fps) and as soon as I pause playing, the green progress bar that indicates project is loaded in RAM disappears or becomes fragmented - without modifying the project in any way. When this happens it also becomes nearly impossible to do additional editing as every simple task (as simple as resetting the play range) can result in the spinning beachball. There was a recent thread on RAM preview issues (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12215113&#12215113) but it appears the problem there was due to a long HDV project. The projects I experience this on generally have a lot of particles or replicated elements, but are standard 720 x 486 resolution projects lasting less than 10 sec. System memory usage is relatively small, less than 4 GB.
These issues arise on a recently purchased MacPro (3.33 GHz 6-Core, 16 GB RAM, ATI 5870). The boot disc is an OWC SSD, and user folders, scratch, etc are on separate hard drives. I installed the operating system on the SSD using the installation disc, and have manually installed all my programs from their original discs. (I initially used migration assistant to bring over applications, but that failed with some applications, so I wiped clean and started over). There have also been some past threads on how different hardware configurations can affect performance, but I don't seem to be doing anything abnormal here.
What I have done:
Tested ram using memtestosx
Verified memory usage through activity monitor. The projects I have tested on use up less than 4 GB of system memory
Before each test or comparison I reset preferences.
I do not have this flakey behavior with an older MBP (17" 2.93 GHz Core 2 MBP with NVIDIA 9600) running the same OS (10.6.4) and motion version (4.0.3). Running the same project on the MBP will take longer for the RAM preview to complete, but when it does, the project plays at full frame rate.
The upgrade to a MacPro was mainly for other CPU and RAM intensive applications unrelated to video or graphics, but I expected motion to show a nice performance boost over the MBP on this new machine. Anyhow, any insight or direction for further investigation that I should pursue will be appreciated.
Thanks.

I tried your project (nice, BTW), and yes, 20,000+ particles take some time to render. However, when I did a RAM Preview, I had no problems - after render it played at full speed.
UNTIL...
I selected the emitter. Then playback went to the pre-RAM-Preview speeds. As soon as I turned off overlays or made sure the emitter was not selected, the playback instantly sped back up to full speed. I believe this is because Motion needs to image the constantly changing outline of the emitter. This means it needs to be re-drawn every frame after Motion determines the extent/size of the 20,000 particles on their random journey.
I think this is backed up by the fact that near the end of your project, there are only a few particles to keep track of and the playback appropriately speeds up. Also, CPU usage vastly increases when I turn on the overlays.
Moral of the story? To ensure the quickest possible playback, turn off overlays (⌘/) or ensure that something like a particle emitter is not selected during playback.
Patrick

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RAM previewing issue

Hi,
I'm working in After Effects CS4, and I'm having a problem when I try to RAM preview short sections of an animation project. The RAM preview keeps stopping before it reaches the end of the work area, and beginning again. I'm pretty new to the program, but I've also noticed the little green bars that, I believe, tell you if the section has rendered/processed always have little gaps in them. That may be related. I don't know.
Does anyone know what may be causing this RAM previewing issue?
On a side note, I'm using After Effects on a Macbook (not a Macbook Pro), and I'm wondering whether this problem may be due to the Macbook not being sufficient for After Effects and CS4 in general. (I had originally intended to install the program on my 2004-era G5 tower, but it wouldn't install After Effects CS4 because apparently the program won't work with PowerPC processors, only Intel ones. At least that's what I was told.) Anyway, I've wondered whether the RAM previewing issue may be due to the Macbook not being enough computer for After Effects/CS4. My Macbook has a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 and 106 GB of available space.
Any insights on the RAM previewing issue and whether my Macbook isn't a suitable computer for these programs would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot,
Neil

From the theoretical specs there is nothing that speaks against your notebook. Apparently the biggest hurdle for some users is to get it to run in the first place, but now that it runs, it's safe to say that you will be able to use it properly. Of course, to let truth have its way, you will become slightly peeved at a point and get that yearning for a new machine, when you use more functions and your projects become more complex. Especially the only 2GB RAM will then often become a show stopper and you will really hate Adobe when one of those dreaded "Could not creat X x Y buffer" or similar out of memory warnings pop up. Still, no need to rush. Take your time and see, if AE is even everything you thought it would be and then make clear, structured plans for getting a new computer. You wouldn't wanna spend another 2000 bucks on a spiffy machine just to run AE once a month.
Mylenium

Ram Preview Issue with Yosemite

Hi, I have updated to OS X Yosemite, I am using AE 13.1.1.3, and now I am having an issue with RAM-Preview that makes working with AE problematic: When I start the Preview by hitting "0" on the Numpad the Ram Preview starts, but I am not able to stop it anymore until it has rendered to the end of the work area.
It is also strange that I am able to move keyframes while it renders.
The Shift-Ram Preview is also affected by this bug.

There is a known bug with Yosemite and the RAM preview, but your issue sounds different. Anyway, see the known issues here: After Effects good to go with Mac OSX v10.10 (Yosemite)

ERROR: RAM Preview Issue

Hello -
I have been researching this issue all day. I have seen a variety of posts but no solution for me yet.
I am using AE 5.5. I get the following error when trying to Preview.
"RAM preview needs 2 or more frames to playback"
I am working on a Mac and I have tried it on the Mac laptop and Mac desktop. Both systems have enough RAM to handle After Effects.
Any guidance is very much appreciated!!
Thank you

HI, I'm experiencing this problem as well, but it only starts after I add audio.
My composition is quite simple at the moment, I just need this snippet of audio to create a simple animation...
I'm able to listen to the audio with ram preview in the Viewer, but once I add it to the composition, I get the error.
I then have to proceed to re-start AE because once I remove the audio from the comp, the same error will come up again (until restarted).
Audio settings are:
My computer info:
Any help is appreciated. Thanks

After Effects 2014 CC Ram Preview Issue

Ever since I upgraded to CC 2014(from CC) I have been experiencing an issue. My RAM preview will start somewhere in the middle of my in/out points. I have to wait for it to loop to see the beginning. I have tried checking/unchecking "from current time," I have tried cycling through the playback options, and I have tried clearing my cache. Nothing seems to work. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

This is a known bug with Mac OSX v10.10 (Yosemite).
After Effects with Mac OSX v10.10 (Yosemite)

After FX ram preview issue

I keep getting the error message, "After Effects Error: Ram Preview needs two or more frames to play back." I've used AFX for many years and have never encountered this error. What do I do?

I think the issue was resolved with the newest update, however a new wrinkle has developed. If I have the "render multiple frames simultaneously" selected, the preview hangs up. I have always had this selected and it's worked flawlessly until just recently. Can you offer some insight?

Super slow audio RAM preview issues in AE CS5

Hi all,
I've been having a tough time previewing audio while working in AfterEffects. I'm using Version 10.0.2.4, running on a 2x2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with 64 gigs of memory.
I've opened up projects that have never given me any issues in the past and I seem to be experiencing the same issue, over and over again:
When I try to preview a comp with audio (either hitting "0" on the keypad, or "." on the keypad), I get the "spinning beach ball" for at least 20-30 seconds before the audio kicks in. When I disable audio in my preview window, I have no delay with the RAM preview.
This happens with .aiffs and .wav files.
I've done the usual tricks -- restarting my machine, double checking to make sure there's not an issue with my speaker setup, repairing permissions, checking for updates.
Has anyone else experienced these issues, and is there a workaround? I have a job coming up that requires me to quickly preview audio and waiting 30 seconds every time I need to check my progress with a RAM preview is going to be soul-crushing.
I'll happily answer any questions -- I'm sure there's a bunch of info I've left out, and fingers crossed it's just some setting that I've ignored that's causing this issue.
Thanks,
Dan

Sorry for all the questions, but...
What path/hardware does your audio take to be output? Analog from the Mac? Via a third party card like an AJA or Blackmagic device? USB speakers?
Have you specified the audio device in the AE audio hardware preferences? Have you tried outputting to a different device, or removing the device and just using the standard system audio?

PP CC & AE CC: Windows lose focus, AE stops playing RAM preview

I'm experiencing very odd behavior when I have Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC open at the same time. Please let me know if there is any additional information I can provide to troubleshoot this issue.
Symptoms:
I'm working in Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC and am noticing some very odd behavior where I'll be working in an application (any Windows application) and the Window will lose focus. For example, as I'm typing this question, the window will periodically lose focus, and I'll have to wait a second to start typing again.
Another Symptom is that I'll be in After Effects CC, I'll press 0 to do a RAM Preview, but AE will stop looping for some unknown reason. It's never at the same time and it's always intermittent.
Obervations:
This only happens when I have both After Effects CC and Premiere Pro CC open at the same time
With Sysinternals Process Explorer Open, I notice that CEPServiceManager.exe (Adobe CEP Service Manager) opens as a child process of Adobe Premiere Pro.exe. When this process is open, I experience the symptoms described above. When this process stops, the symptoms stop.
I think there's only an issue when the PP CC project has a linked AE comp in it.
Steps to Reproduce:
Windows 7 Utlimate x64 SP1.
Open Premiere Pro CC and Create a new Project
Open After Effects CC and create a new comp.
Save the Project in AE CC.
Add a solid to the comp.
Save the comp.
Drag the AE Comp to the PP CC project.
Make a change to the AE Comp.
Expected:
Windows behaves normally. After Effects behaves normally.
Actual:
Symptoms occur as described above.

harcnowhear wrote:
- Even when video is rendered to a .Mov Lossless file the video is still juddery and appears to be dropping frames when played in Quick Time - VLC is better slightly.
That is to be expected (unless you have a RAID setup for your computer's hard drives). An uncompressed HD file has a data rate that is much too high for your hard drive to handle. If you take that high data rate file into the Adobe Media Encoder and render it into a deliverable format such as H.264, it should play back without issue. If this is the case (and I'm pretty sure it is), this is unrelated to your RAM preview issue.
What version of AE are you running? You say CC, but is it 12.2.0 or 12.1.0? If you haven't yet, update to the latest version; it fixes a lot of bugs.
Also, when you say you've been using AE version 5 and 5.5, do you mean CS5 (actually version 10) and CS5.5 (actually version 10.5) or do you really mean you're using the really old versions?
harcnowhear wrote:
We have an older mac here which has an older card with more ram (1024 MB) on the card, which takes longer to render the preview (is that due to less system RAM?)
Rendering speed usually has less to do with RAM and much more to do with the processor's clock speed. This is likely the difference.
Is this older Mac running CC or is this the older version you mentioned in the "Extra notes" section?
Have you tried updating the driver for the graphics card? The GPU has very little to do with rendering in AE (except for the Ray-Traced renderer, but that doesn't matter as you don't have an NVIDIA card), but it does have to do with AE's display of its playback.

Issues with performance and RAM previews

Just did a major system upgrade from an iMac to a Mac Pro, and now I'm having an issue with performance...specifically with RAM previews.
When I try to do a RAM preview with audio, it grinds my entire OS to a hault (can't switch apps, or click on much of anything). It eventually clears up enough for me to stop the RAM preview.
So, I'm wondering if maybe my Memory & Multiprocessing settings might be off.
Here are my system specs:
Mac Pro
2 x 2.4GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12 cores)
64GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870
AE CS6 (11.0.2.11)
AE is installed on an SSD drive and the scratch disk is an internal HDD.
Here are my AE Memory Settings:
Here's my GPU Info:
Let me know if any other info is needed...

You are reserving far too little RAM for other software.
See this: "Performance tip: Don't starve your software of RAM."
(Also, I recommend going through all of these materials: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/543440 )
Regarding the SSD: Putting your application files on it means that applications load/boot faster. This is fine, but that benefit is just when you first start the application. If you put your cache files on it, then you get the benefit every time that something is read from or written to the cache---i.e., many times per second, for the entire time that you're working. Put your cache files on your SSD. BTW, there's no reason to not put your application files and caches on the same SSD. The reason that you split things across multiple disks is to prevent simultaneous reads and writes to and from a slow disk; the program loading from disk happens at a different time than reading and writing cache files, so there is no potential for conflict and slowdown.

After Effects CS5.5 - Very Serious Performance Issues w/RAM Preview

My system: Windows 7 Professional, two Intel Xeon X5650's, 12GB RAM, and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800.
Problem: RAM Preview in CS5.5 gives me less than 2 fps (yes---two frames per second). This is even with the most simple of compositions. I created a 1080p 23.976 project with two simple solid layers and keyframed position and scale values for one of them with no other effects on either solid. RAM Preview gives me 1.8 fps.
I still have AE CS5 installed and it gives me solid, predictable results with RAM Preview. When I create a similar test project inside CS5, it creates the RAM preview almost instantly and displays in proper realtime (23.976 fps).
My settings for both CS5 and CS5.5 are similar (and I have tried many variations in my attempt to fix this problem).
PREVIEWS
Fast Previews: Adaptive Resolution Limit 1/4
Enabled OpenGL and both sub-options for OpenGL enabled.
MEMORY & MULTIPROCESSING
RAM reserved for other apps: 4GB
I have tried various settings for Multiprocessing, all of which results in the same less-than-2 fps RAM Previews. Currently I have MP'ing enabled with 1.5GB allocation per background CPU and the actual CPU's used is 4. Again, no matter what I set it to, I get the same performance issue.
On my screen magnification ratio setting, I am using 25% and my Resolution/Down Sample is set to quarter. On my preview tab, I have tried setting my resolution from the default of "Auto" to "Quarter" with no difference.
In summary: On the same machine, AE CS5.5 RAM Preview offers terrible performance; CS5 RAM Preview offers great performance.

Under AJA Preview there are check boxes, one for "Video" and the other for "Preview." I've checked and unchecked them both and I'm still getting poor RAM previews. No matter what I have toggled, I seem to get between 1 and 2 fps for my RAM Previews.
I am not currently using the AJA card for anything. I will consider uninstalling it if this might possibly solve my problem. It's just a hassle to install and uninstall cards on a per need basis.
If there are any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them. At this point, I'd do just about anything to have realtime previews back.
The machine I'm using, by the way, is an HP z800 with Windows 7 Professional, two Intel Xeon X5650's, 12GB RAM, and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800. It has the following installed: CS5.5 Production Premium, AVID Media Composer 5.5.2, and AVID DS 10.5.1 (among other programs).

After effects ram preview video playback issue

Greetings -- I have Mac Pro 2.93 GHz 12 Core with Nvidia Quadro 4000 & 24GB Ram.
During ram preview playback, it seems as though the video isn't refreshing fast enough in the display -- meaning its almost as if I can see the refresh on the top/bottom half of the frame happening separately. It's a bit diffucut to describe, actually. This does not happen with the same clip in Premiere, just AE.
The rendered video is fine and plays in QT/VLC, etc. without issue, it's just ram preview and is very distracting.
Any help woul dbe greatly appreciated!
Seth

CS6, 720p clip, 100%, Full, 29.97 fps. This may be related to the preview settings... It seems to go away if I turn it to final quality v.s. adaptive.
Fast Draft:
Available
Texture Memory:
409.00 MB
Ray-tracing:
GPU
OpenGL
Vendor:
NVIDIA Corporation
Device:
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 OpenGL Engine
Version:
2.1 NVIDIA-7.10.2
Total Memory:
2.00 GB
Shader Model:
CUDA
Driver Version:
4.2
Devices:
1 (Quadro 4000)
Current Usable Memory:
1.11 GB (at application launch)
Maximum Usable Memory:
2.00 GB

RAM Preview framerate and sound issues

The same story as usual. A beginner who can't get the framerate right or the sound to play in the RAM Preview. Well then:
Ae CS6.11.0.0378, I think
Demo version
7,9 g ram allocatable
Win7 proffesional
Only .avi and .mp4, can't tell much more than that
All other common factors can think of vary between the layers, with no difference.
Sound preview set to 10 minutes
No mute-related settings activated
Sound and volume checked for each individual layer
I don't know what more to submit, there's probably a lot.
It's quite simple. No sound in the RAM preview, and it keeps freezing, not responding when I start it, and playing at random speeds. The sound does play in sound preview. The framerate is set to auto.
That's about all I can think of. It probably needs a lot more detail required, but not anything I can think of. Any help appreciated.

You can get the frame rate right by dragging a clip in question onto the Make Comp icon at the bottom of the project window.
If you're fooling around with time -- time stretch, time remapping, posterize time, time displacement -- or using Rotobrush or Warp Stabilizer -- you should know that AE doesn't like mp4's as the source video. No telling about the avi.
There could also be compressed audio in the video files, and AE has never played nice with compressed audio.

RAM Preview Audio Skipping Issue

- After Effects Version: 13.2.0.49 (This is the most recent update as I installed it today)
- OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
- So, I rendered out a clip from Media Encoder in H.264 format, and imported it back into After Effects and attempted to use RAM playback. The video plays fine without skipping, but the audio plays back partially, and begins to leave out certain parts. In other words, the audio says, "I'm going to try to spend more quality time with Luke, last time didn't go too well", After Effects plays back "I'm going to try to spend more - last time."
- I rendered out a series of clips. However, only the first two that I rendered in Media Encoder playback the audio in After Effects correctly, the rest all have skipping audio in AE only. I can play them back in Windows Media Player perfectly.
- My PC setup is: Intel Quad Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 series video card, 1920x1080 monitor, and 1 hard disk.
- My GPU driver is: GeForce Game Ready Driver (version: 344.65)
- I render all of the video clips using H.264 format in a .mp4 container.
- Quicktime version: 7.75.80.95
- I am only using After Effects for all of the video and audio and Media Encoder to render.
- No third party effects or codecs.
- I don't think I am using OpenGL features. (I'm not sure)
- This, as previously stated happens when I preview the already-rendered clip in the RAM preview, but it also happens when I put the rendered clips together in one video and render them out again.
- I am not doing any multiprocessing frame rendering.
- I am not using the ray-traced 3D renderer.
- If it helps, here's my output settings on Media Encoder:
Audio settings:
Video settings:
NOTE: I followed the FAQ guidelines as best as I could.

First, try exporting using one of the presets.
Second, H.264 has highly compressed audio and AE does not like that very much. If you are intending to do more editing on this video clip then you should be exporting a production format not a highly compressed MPEG format. Your audio problems are most likely caused by using some non standard settings somewhere along the way. That's why you should pick a preset and not mess with the audio encoding at all.

Unable to create image buffer after RAM preview

Running into an odd and frustrating error. Built a comp using the new Ray-traced 3D renderer and now I'm regretting being an early adopter big time with all the problems I've been encountering with it. The latest comes whenever I do a longer RAM preview in an attempt to watch the whole duration of my comp. It will get to about 170 frames or so, at which point I've interrupted by pressing spacebar because I don't need to see all the way to the end of my work area (around 220 frames). It'll play the RAM preview back fine, and even loop it, but as soon as I stop playback, I get this error message: "After Effects warning: Unable to create image buffer." There's only one button: "okay" and as soon as I click it the same error pops up again and it will never go away, forcing me to close AE from the task manager. I've taken to saving before every RAM preview like I used to do with Flash before previewing my buggy swfs for fear I'll lose all my work after previewing. Any ideas about what might be causing this?
Some more details about my comp:
1920x1080 @ 29.97
Ray-traced 3D
About 70 3D layers (I'm guessing this is my downfall - new renderer not designed for this many layers?)
Running Windows 7 Professional
i7 2600K
32GB RAM
2x GTX 570 video cards running latest driver (301.42, CUDA 4.2.1)
508GB free on my 2TB internal drive where the project and cache lives
From my GPU info window in case it's useful:
Fast Draft:
Available
Texture Memory:
600.00 MB
Ray-tracing:
GPU
OpenGL
Vendor:
NVIDIA Corporation
Device:
GeForce GTX 570/PCIe/SSE2
Version:
3.0.0
Total Memory:
1.20 GB
Shader Model:
4.0 or later
CUDA
Driver Version:
4.2
Devices:
2 (GeForce GTX 570, GeForce GTX 570)
Current Usable Memory:
1.04 GB (at application launch)
Maximum Usable Memory:
1.25 GB

Yeah, some buffer is very likely not flushing when you interrupt the preview and then there is no more memory on the graphics hardware. Consider setting the work area and your preview options to use only the work area. if it finishes the preview "correctly", it may not suffer the issue. Beyond that - raytracing doesn't/ shouldn't care about the number of items. The math is such, that it makes no difference whether you render a million polygons or just one. Of course there are still limitations due to the GPU dependency, but I doubt you ever truly exhaust the cards' geometry buffers. Compared to pixel data that is a small amount...
Mylenium

AE CS4 - why such poor RAM preview on my FAST machine?

Hi all, I just installed After Effects CS4 - I have a smokin fast mchine: quadcore Zeon 3.20 GHz, hyperthreading turned on, nvidia quadrofx 3800 with current driver, 12 GB DDR3 RAM, windows 7 64bit ... can you PLEASE help me troubleshoot a problem: even on the simplest compositions, a moving picture or a moving piece of type, the RAM preview stutters along, the current time indicator hops along at a choppy pace, images in the frame dont look like they're moving smoothly, and all i get is about 6 seconds of RAM preview ... seems to me that I used to get better performance on a MUCH MUCH slower machine under windows XP ... i have looked around the forums and seem the advice on multiprocessor options and the like, but nothing I do seems to help ... do any of you have any advice for me to improve my performance??? if you have any questions about my setup or preferences, let me know, I will be on this until I get what I expect out of my (otherwise incredibly fast) machine

Hi Todd, thanks again for your reply ... FYI, I bought the FX3800 for Avid editing, for which it is the qualified video card, and supports distributed processing in the Avid along with my DX HD hardware BOB - I had hoped it would work well with After Effects, too, but I do understand the Adobe is very transparent about the fact that, as long as your card has OpenGL support, probably best to sink your $$$ into more RAM or faster CPU .. but to stay on topic, I am just very stunned that I am not getting better playback with my system ... I have the most recent Nvidia drivers ... I have 2 NEC 2490WUXi2 each connected through DVI-D to my video card, each runnign at its native 1920x1200 res, 59 hertz ... the programs I have installed are Adobe CS4 Production Premium, Win7 64bit, MS Office 2007 Enterprise, latest version of Quick Time, Media Player version 11, and NERO 9 ... you dont think that one of these video player apps (like media player or QT) are messing with my screen performance do you? what about Nero 9, have you heard any compatibility or display problems associated with this app? would unistalling any of these programs be a troubleshooting technique that you'd attempt?
Finally, when you say "an issue with a bottleneck of drawing to the screen" what do you mean exactly? 'cause this kinds sounds like a goood description of what I am seeing ... what might be the cause of such a bottleneck, I am willing to try anything ...
Thanks, sir, for your reply!
Derek Reid
Trader Multimedia Inc.
www.tradermm.com
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:46:43 -0600
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: AE CS4 - why such poor RAM preview on my FAST machine?
Just one thing to cut down a frequent misconception:
Your nice graphics card doesn't do much for After Effects performance.In fact, trying to use OpenGL for rendering (including rendering of previews) can cause problems.
I recommend turning OpenGL rendering off for all but interactions. I.e., choose the http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WSAF696587-2D81-42e2-B248-4C5C2B7D3614a.html and turn off http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a4f2dff7-79e8a.htm l. OpenGL is not compatible with Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing.
I'm not saying that OpenGL is your problem. Rather, because you mentioned your nice graphics card, I just had to stress that you need to forget about that with regard to After Effects. It's not really relevant.
It may be that the jerkiness is an issue with a bottleneck of drawing to the screen. (I don't know, but it's possible.)
Your hard disk being too slow wouldn't be an issue with RAM previews, since the frames are all cached in RAM.
>

RAM Preview issue

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