After Effects Error: RAM preview needs 2 or more frames to playback

I keep getting this error message on a Windows 7 64bit system with 12GB of RAM. I have tried rebooting and re-installing the application and After Effects still gives me this error message when I press '0' to perform a RAM preview
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks

Canon PowerShot SX20IS
I would suspect that is the problem.... From what I gather, it uses H.264 compression inside MOVs, but it may use an unusual, non-standard profile and thus throw off AE. Can you check these settings in the extended info in the Quicktime Player? would help to know some more details. If you have Quicktime Pro, it may be enough to re-export the clip from there. Using identical settings, this should go pretty fast and not cause any changes in quality, but doing so may fix little annoyances commonlyy associated with such formats like open gaps or invalid timecode markers. If that doesn't help, then I guess it's time to run it through SUPER©, ffmpeg etc. to get workable converted files...
Mylenium

Similar Messages

"After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames for playback"

i7-980x, Win 7 64, 16 gb RAM
I STILL get the "After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames for playback" and max allowed memory of 0.4, despite max usable memory listed as 15.99. Sometimes if I run Premiere Pro, PS, AI, 3-4 QT movies and 5 or six other programs simultaneously, after effects will recognize Premiere Pro and allopw me 5-6 gigs active memory, but this can take an hour or two and is hit and miss.
VERY FRUSTRATED here.
This happens with and without the firewall turned on.
Please help

I get this error message when I accidentaly move my CTI (Current Time Indicator) to the end of the composition. If besides also the option "From current time" in the preview panel is checked, After Effects will see that I just marked less than 2 frames namely 1 (from the end frame of my comp to this end frame).
Check therefore where your CTI is positioned!
Also you could have the same problem, if this option "From current time" is not checked, but you have your work areas in- and out-points closer than 2 frames together.
So condensed: Check your CTI and your work area and set the CTI on a previous frame or let your work area start earlier.

After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback when previewing animation video

Good afternoon,
We have an error that is persistent. This error RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames occurs in AE CC often. It happens when we preview what has been animated a few times. Here's all the details below on what we're working on and the computer specs.
Computer Details
Processor 2x2.93 GHZ Core Intel Xeon
Memory 28GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Software OS X 10.9.4
Graphics Card ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB Graphics
Project Details
Project usually consists of comps 1920x1080 dimensions RGB
And we're simply animating
Video is always prores 1920x1080
We've added RAM to this comp and still nothing has changed. I saw that the other error for this has been fixed but I'm not sure what's going on in AE for this to continue. Please help !

ahorne21 wrote:
And we're simply animating
Animating what?
What exact version of AE (down to the last decimal)?
How are you invoking the RAM preview?

After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback (It's Back)

Just upgeaded to 12.1 and this error is back. I have tried purging memory, restarting and closing all apps with no luck. System specs as follows...
Mac Pro 2 x 2.4 Ghz Quad Core
40 GB of Ram
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB of VRAM
Any ideas?
Mike

Hold the phone, I may have jumped the gun on this. This looks like it might be an issue with the VCReflect plugin from the folks at Video Copilot. If somones else would like to give it a try that would be swell. Here's what I did to create it.
Added a text layer.
Applied VCReflect and set it up
Moved text off screen.
As soon as the text is almost off screen it stops moving any further. At that point I start getting the Ram Preview error. If I delete the off screen keyframe I am back to normal.
Mike

After Effects CS6 error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback - any ideas please?

Hi everyone,
I'm running After Effects CS6 (11.0.4.2) on a MacBook Pro 2.8Ghz with 16GB RAM (Mac OS 10.9.4)
As a test, I created a 3 and a half minute Sequence in Adobe Premiere CS6, and then imported this into After Effects CS6, and placed it on the AE timeline.
This footage involves a couple of 1920x1080p footage movies, some psds and a large number of JPGs exported from two videos arranged as a sequence in two layers in Premiere, one on top of the other. So all in all for a Premiere / After Effects file I'd say it's reasonably heavy.
I then did a RAM Preview with Multiprocessing switched off - the 3 and a half minute sequence loaded into RAM, taking about 1min 30seconds, and played back in realtime at 25fps. This worked fine with 3,4,5 and 6 GB RAM available to other applications in the Memory Preferences. All things considered I think this is quite good. I can make changes, reclick the RAM Preview icon and my changes load into RAM and it previews ok.
My only 'complaint' is how long the RAM Preview takes to load up the whole thing.
I've been reading up on Multiprocessing and decided to try this to see if I can speed up the time it takes my RAM Preview to load up.
So I looked at some recommendations from Adobe and read information on various forums including this one.
My settings in the Memory Preferences are currently
• 6GB reserved for other applications
• Reduce cache size when system is low on memory - unticked
• After Effects Multiprocessing - ticked
• Installed CPUs (processor cores) - 8
• CPUs reserved for other applications - 6
• RAM allocation per background CPU - 3GB
• Actual CPUs that will be used - 2
This combination takes about 25 seconds to load up my 3 and a half minute sequence which I thought was pretty amazing.
I then pressed the stop button and then the play button - so now just playing the sequence briefly.
And also added a new layer - into the timeline - just a simple shape.
Then I tried a RAM Preview again.
I found I could load up part of the sequence but not load the whole thing into RAM.
I kept trying to get a RAM Preview and got this message
"After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback" which seems to prevent RAM Preview from working.
Eventually I quit and restarted After Effects and the problem went away temporarily and then came back when I tried again.
I tried various changes to the Memory Preferences - trying 3GB available for other applications. This gave 13GB of my 16GB RAM to After Effects.
This made it take slightly longer for the After Effects error to appear but it still appeared.
I tried ticking Reduce Cache size in the Memory Prefs - the After Effects error still appeared, so having read this is supposed to make the issue better I now leave it untucked, but as far as I can see ticked or untucked, it makes no difference, the problem remains.
I've since tried -
Making 2,3,4,5 and 6 CPUs available for other applications.
Changing the Background RAM allocation per background CPU to 0.75GB, 1GB, 1.5GB, 2GB and 3GB
Lots of combinations.
But in the end, I always get the "After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback" error.
It might take less or more time for the message to show up, depending on the combination of settings, but in the end I always got the same message appearing.
And I notice that I can RAM Preview less and less of the timeline. i.e. it becomes more blue than it does green and will load in only a small section of the timeline as opposed to the whole thing.
Reading further, I tried Edit > Purge > Image Cache and Edit > Purge > All Memory but still get the error message.
I also tried ensuring there were no other applications running e.g. Safari or Chrome or Firefox. And certainly not Photoshop or Premiere etc.
Reading even further, I tried two Memory management applications - 'Memory Clean' and 'Purge.'
Neither has had any effect - the After Effects error still appears.
Then I went back into the Memory and Multiprocessing Preferences.
I unticked Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously. And now the RAM Preview loads the whole 3 and half minute sequence in entirety, taking about 1 and half minutes to do so. It's working as perfectly as if I'd just quit and re-opened the application.
Then I went back into the Memory and Multiprocessing Preferences.
I reticked Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously.
The chose Edit > Purge > All
And tried a RAM Preview again. It loaded up in 25 seconds, but then, as previously, the error message came.
I tried Edit > Purge All - no effect.
And I tried going into the Media and Disk Cache Preferences and clicked Empty Disk Cache - still the problem remains.
I understand from my reading that After Effects CS6 11.0.2 was intended to fix this issue but I'm on 11.0.4 and as far as I can tell, I still have it - assuming it's the same thing.
As far as I can see, not using Multiprocessing allows me to work without these errors but take a bit longer to load the RAM Preview.
However I'd like to be able to use Multiprocessing as it seems it can potentially speeds things up quite a lot. I realise I could just not use it and AE would work, but I'd rather be able to make use of a feature of the software if possible, especially if it will speed things up and make optimum use of the my computer's hardware.
I've downloaded a trial copy of After Effects CC 2014. I'm still testing it but as far as I can see the RAM Preview error appears in this version of AE as well, but can take bit longer to show up in my experience.
Thanks everyone - if anyone has any thoughts or advice I'd appreciate hearing your opinions.
Kind regards,
John

You need to have much more RAM reserved for other applications and more CPUs reserved for other applications. Your current settings are crippling your performance.
Read these:
https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2009/12/performance-tip-dont-starve-yo.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/03/performance-tip-dont-oversched.html
After you have adjusted your settings according to the recommendations on those pages, restart your computer and try again.

Adobe After Effects CS6 Ram Preview Crash Problem

Hey, Recently my AE cs6 has been crashing when I started to RAM preview and the message that shows up is. "After Effects error: Crash In Progress. last logged message was: <1948><ai.blit.pipe><2> HardwareBlitpipe Disenaged."
Specs:
AMB 8150
16 GB of ram
GTX 660 Ti

We need to know a lot more if we're going to help you. Please provide answers to the questions listed here: "FAQ: What information should I provide when asking a question on this forum?"

RAM Preview error: Ram Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback

Hi, I recently started getting error messages (saying the discussion's title) whenever I pressed "0" to RAM Preview my work. I've disabled multiprocessing, tried enabling/disabling all my footage and corresponding effects, but to no avail. It's a 5-second video withOne of my sources is a .jpg, one is a Quicktime movie played overtop of the .jpg, and then there are 6 .wav sound effects. The only other thing I can think of that I have is a Drop Shadow effect on the Quicktime movie and B&W on the .jpg. The current time marker is also set to the beginning of the timeline, and I've cleaned out my cache.
Comp. Settings
Preset: NTSC D1
Width: 720 px
Height: 486 px
Pixel Aspect Ratio: D1/DV NTSC (0.91)
Frame Rate: 29.97
Res: Full
Any tips on what else I could try? Thanks

What version of After Effects? What operating system?
If it's CS5, have you installed the After Effects CS5 (10.0.1) update? That update fixes a lot of problems.
Does this happen with every composition or just this one?
Finally, try disabling the audio layers and try again.

After Effects will RAM Preview not in real time

Hi, we have 3 adobe After Effects CC up to date here, we are working on a 60fps project in HD 1080. Nothing crazy.
We have 20 Gigas of ram. Mac OS 10.8.5 octo core 2011. ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 Mo. SSD disque crucial m500 256 gigas.
We have a lot of problem with Ram Preview. (on every project)
Everything works fine until, we don't know why, the ram preview is getting not realtime, like 30fps or under.
Sometimes purge memory do the trick but not always.
We need to reboot and it works again, but few minutes.
We made a test on CS5 and it works well realtime, but same problem on CS6.
I tried to delete all the preferences to check but no difference.
We are working with nfs network account but i always redirect disk cache to local disk (set to 20 gigas) and also media conformed cache (database and cache)
We are getting mad, it's really hard to work that way, rebooting each time.
Maybe an issue with Global performance cache introduced in CS6 ?
It's not a footage/project issue because the entire project (a blend of tiff, png, prores422) can be played 120 frames/sec without any problem on after CS5, after CS6 (when it works), CC (when it works).
The problem is when working on project, changing layers, adding effects, After CC starts not be slow and not realtime using Ram Preview.
Also, when we are previewing, a lot of ram is not used, it only uses like 20% of the ram.
We hope for a nice patch very soon ....

60 fps is a very high frame rate not usually supported. If your footage is shot at 60i then it is probably 29.97 fps when converted to progressive video. If the footage is actually 60 fps then you will be better off, and by better off I mean more folks and streaming services will be able to view your video at the proper speed.
So my recommendation is to first determine your audience and then set up your comp appropriately. In all my years in the business I have only delivered one high frame rate project and that was 48 fps.
The other thing I would recommend is to optimize your system for AE. That does not necessarily mean throw all your available ram and processors at the app. There are some good recommendations here: Optimizing After Effects Performance

Black magic and Adobe After effect cs6 Ram Preview not real time

Hello,
I'm on a MAC PRO with the OS 10.6.8 and 8Go Ram, the problem is when i turn on my preview video on the Blackmagic the video monitor is not in real time and the after effect is so slow. When i put it off (computer monitor only) it's ok but i havn't my video monitor of course....and i need it. Is there some tricks for having my black magic (1080 i 50) ON and a RAM Preview in real time ??? ! My drivers Black magic is the 9.5.3 it's the highest driver for MAC OS 10.6.8 + ADOBE CS6+ FCP7. Thanks for the read. ( i tried update adobe, change qt library, change aspect ratio, pixel, preview ram settings, change drivers black magic and other but nothing work )

What is the color bit depth of your project? (8, 16 or 32?) Have you changed that recently, or have you changed the frame rate or frame size of your comp?
Performance with video preview to an external monitor is almost always related to the pure bandwidth requirements of the frames you're sending to it. If the frames require more memory, it may be slower. Frame size, frame rate, and color bit depth all affect the memory requirements of the frames.
If none of those parameters has changed, troubleshoot the general performance of your machine. If there are other processes (look in Activity Monitor) that are using significant processor and/or memory resources, they may be causing a bottleneck for the frames getting out.

After Effects CS4 ram preview slow start-up (8 core)

Hi,
I have an Intel 8core PC and I'm working with After Effects CS4 on Windows Vista 64 bit.
When I press on ram preview the CPU usage has a slow startup till 100%.. Is this common or? Cause it takes a while till it really uses the CPU of 100%.. so it has a delay..
Thanks!

I have a similar system. 2 AMD Opeteron 2.3gb quad processors, 8 gb of RAM, Quadro FX5600 video card. I had called Adobe support about how slow my new system was compared to the old system that had a dual core Intel with CS3 and Win XP Pro. Here is the problem:
On the new 64 bit architecture, After Effects CS4 is still a 32 bit program but takes advantage of renders with the 64 bit OS by running After Effects on each core. If you only have 8gb of Ram with 8 cores( like I do), After Effects is loading on to each core. This leaves 1 GB per core to run the OS and After Effects. He told me what I need to do is (1) eliminate half the cores or (2) load the system up with 32 Gb of Ram. I'm currently order more Ram memory but have disabled all but 2 cores in msconfig advanced tab. It working much better at this point. Still slow but not dragging. I've order another 16 Gb of ram and will replace the other old 8 gb of ram with another 16gb at a later date.

After effects cc RAM preview problem

I recently bought a new rig
i7 4790K running at stock
8gb 1866mhz corsair vengeance pro ram 2x4gb
EVGA GTX 770 2gb superclocked
WD Black 1TB 7200rpm
Samsung 840 Pro 128gb
Asus Z97-PRO motherboard
I run AE and open a file and import my clip (59.94fps) and add twixtor and then hit ram preview to see if all is good and it either takes a little bit longer than it should
or it would say "Rendering frame switching to foreground" When this happens all seems ok but after the preview I can not scroll through the timeline without lag and pixelation again like as if I havnt hit the ram preview. So it would have the green bar above the clips showing for the ram preview but once the preview is over I can scroll through the timeline for a second then the green bar goes away. I know that the pixelation is due to adaptive resolution
but I have tried changing that to "fast draft" and the pixelation stops but still struggle to view in timeline. I have the preview resolution set to third or quarter.
I thought that getting higher clocked ram would solve the problem atleast a little more. But not to much. So my main question is what am I doing wrong? Or how can I correctly setup AE or my computer to handle this?
The main clip is actually 200fps but I go to File>Interperate footage>Main>Conform to framerate
Changing it from 200fps to 59.94.
My main frustration is I see videos of the kinds of clips I'm editing posted by kids that edited them and I think theres no way they have a pc as expensive as mine that would allow them to edit these clips. So Its gotta be something I'm doing wrong.
Thank you to anyone that helps so much!

Well, for starters, turn off MP rendering. That warning during RAM previews is a clear indication that you are using it and well, with just 8GB RAM it doesn't exactly make sense. The rest is too vague since you haven't provided any proper details about your source file, but suffice it to say that temporal mangling of any kind can have weird effects, even more so if your source files are compressed. Therefore the pertinent thing to do first would be to convert your file to an uncompressed intermediate format, including conforming it to your target framerate. In addition you may simply consider not using any fast previews or the disk cache at all. It is known to be flaky with temporal plug-ins. set your comp to Final quality to enforce software mode rendering.
Mylenium

After Effects not Ram previewing properly

Hello
I use after effects cc 2014 on my macbook pro version 10.9.5 2.6GHz intel core i7. Memory 16G 1600 MHz DDR3. Nvidia GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB.
Recently, almost every time I try and do a Ram preview using the button in the preview panel, my computer pauses and appears to not register then when I move the mouse it beach balls. If I wait and watch it it, it suddenly shows green but doesn't play back. If I hit the button again it does it all again. If I hit space bar to play it doesn't play the audio. It does scrub fine. If I go on to another program while it is previewing it lets me know when it has done but isn't playing and if I hit the button to get it to play it does it again!! It does occasionally work but more often than not it doesn't.
I have tried all the usual restarts and purging the cache.
The comp is a 25fps 1920x1080 and I am using 3D but the comps aren't huge.
Any help would be great!
Thanks
Leah

well, one way to go would be to use an AEGP plug-in which would intercept
the preview command.
i don't know if there is such a command and if it's guaranteed to
intercept, but you could use command_hook with the "all commands" option,
and see what you catch when you hit 0.
if so, then your effect could communicate with the AEGP to ask for the
state.
if you give up on ram previews and care only for queue renders, then you
could check the queue state during the render call.

After Effects unrender RAM preview after stop playing it.

Hi! We have 5 workstations running After Effects CS6 on different computers, from HP z820, HP z800, and also on OSX Mac Pro, all of them with or AJA cards or BlackMagic Studio cards. On all of these stations, which they have no less than 24 GB or RAM, and working with 30 Seconds ads, so we have more than enough RAM to keep previews on RAM, they play fine once rendered to RAM, but we observe that most of the times, after hitting stop, and even without doing anything else, the green line is gone in a heartbeat, in some areas of the spot, this gets even worse if we use multiprocessing rendering, in which case, it always vanishes after playing and hitting stop. Without using the multiprocessing, it happens less often, and if we turn off the video monitoring with the AJA or Decklink cards, it happens even less often.... this is happening in several computers we use, and I find hard to believe that we are the only people with this problem? since I have not seen any other reports of this... anyone?
Thanks

Other than the AJA and Blackmagic cards, have you added anything to the systems' hardware?
No, but not sure if the video card... I can, like I said before, load to RAM and play fine source footage, it never loses the green line...
What plugins have you added?
Many, but it happens right now on what I'm working on, and I have no plugins in use, only 4 layers with alpha coming from MAX which I'm comping together.
What codec packs have you added?
How can this be relevant? It happens with any format, on once rendesred to RAM, it has no codec, its the internal AE format. It happens with any kind of source.
At what point in the complexity of the comps does this start happening? Is it number of layers or number of precomps in use?
Well, right now is happening with something extremelly simple, just 4 layers from a 3D render and nothing on it.... I render to ram, it plays, I stop... green line vanishes....
Have you seen this happen before or just in this version of AE?
I have seen this for years... just never really paid much attention to it becuase never considered AE very good at it, but CS6 on of the sales points is how much better caching is... and its not in our case..
As a side note: this is a user-to-user forum. Granted, we are often blessed by the presence of Adobe employees, but it's not guaranteed. There are official tech support channels and an official bug report page that you can use to make sure this is seen by an actual Adobe person.
Thanks! I will report on the official channel once I have something I can reproduce on demand on how to make the program to fail.
V.

After effects slow ram preview hold for 4 seconds before starting

Hi I have upgraded from After effects CS5.5 to CC 2014 , and I notices that when I want to make Ram view by hitting 0 num pad key , it pauses for 3 or 4 seconds before it start caching , and it become really annoying if you want to ram preview every 1 min , I tried playing around with the Preferences /Memory/ Ram reserved for other apps , but no good .
That was not the case in CS 5.5 , is it was starting caching as soon as I hit the 0 key .
I am working on Mac pro workstation , quad core intel xieon 2x 3.2 Ghz Mac Os 10.7.5
Thanks

I am guessing that you have MP rendering turned on in the preferences. Please turn it off and test again.

After Effects CS6 RAM preview seems to now be broken after 11.0.2.12 update

Updated to the latest patch for AE CS6 11.0.2.12.
When I hit RAM Preview, my After Effects just locks up, or has an enormous (minutes) delay if I have multi-processor rending turned on. Info says it is working on background processes.
In fact, if I am using Trapcode Form or Particular and multiprocessor turned on it tends to crash. Since upgrading the version I can't even render that start of a particular scene.
Is anyone else having an issue with this? I have tried it on another workstation in the office and it does exactly the same thing.
My machine is an HP Workstation Z800, Windows 7 64bit, 18Gb Ram, Xeon [email protected] and Nvidia Quadro 5000.

Yes. when using Particular 2.1 I find that if I have MP turned ON it takes forever to set up the processes. Getting out of the MP mode at that point is difficult but possible. Once MP is off everything renders great.
I have no other issues with any operations in the CS6 suite.
This happens on a HP Z820 with all current software/drivers.

After Effects Error: RAM preview needs 2 or more frames to playback

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