Audio Slow/Off-Tempo during RAM Preview & Rendered Video

Hi,
I am trying to do something very simple; cut a 5 second clip from a tv episode.
I opened After Effects, imported the episode, dragged that into the composition window to create a composition, clipped the beginning and ending points. Nothing fancy.
Whenever I do a RAM preview, the audio is super slow and way off. I can't even tell what they're saying.
I had read other places that if you ignored that and just rendered the video, it would turn out okay. That didn't happen. It's still messed up.
The episode video (avi) I started with has normal audio and I've double checked the frame rate options and audio options...
Can someone please help me with this, because I can't find an answer anywhere.
Thanks,

Extract/ convert the audio externally. If it doesn't even render correctly, it means it is compressed and AE can't properly deal with it.
Mylenium

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Audio distortion during RAM preview

I've been working for the past 4 months on the same computer, working on similar animations, nothing has changed much... then this happens.
**During RAM preview, my audio now sounds like an overloading robot.**
I can't seem to find similar issues on the internet to figure this out myself so I'm asking this forum. I haven't changed anything significant that could have altered my computer. I'm using:
late 2013 MacPro model
- with a SSD
- 32GB of DDR3 RAM
- 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5
- AMD FirePro D300 2048MB GPU
But I don't think it's the hardware
Old projects that I've worked on before are now doing the same thing. It's only during my RAM preview. Simple audio preview sounds perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with the audio file because others that have worked before aren't working now.
Has anyone had the same problem?

I can't tell you what the problem was but I found the reset for all my preferences, tried it, and it worked. It solved my problem but I wish I could have found the source because I created my settings 2 months ago. I allocated more memory, changed a few settings but not within the past couple of days that would have created the problem. So i was just perplexed. I'd still like to know what the hell happened to cause this so I don't run into it again.
Thank you for reading this post

Random Flashing Color Bars within Quicktime Files during RAM Preview Only

I have been getting random color bar flashes within quicktime files in AE CC during RAM previews using Multi Processor rendering. Files other than .mov seem to not have this issue (although I have seen it twice...though it may be due to quicktimes in the comp). The rendered output using MP rendering is completely fine. If I turn off MP rendering the ram preview is fine. The source material is coming off a RAID 5 at 600-800MBs, I have moved the footage to a local SSD and a standard spindle drive with the same results. I have tried everything.....disabling GPUS in preview, disabling Fast Adaptive Preview, Disabling Disk Cache, Adjusting MP settings and RAM usage per core, disabling hardware accelleration of interface, adjusting gpu memory useage, every codec under the quicktime wrapper including uncompressed codecs, updating Blackmagic drivers, updating quicktime, limiting how many processors Windows 7 64bit can see, resetting AE preferences. I even installed After Effects clean on my second boot drive for gaming with no plugins or other apps, same issues. Have discussed this heavily with tech support at Adobe and they are working on it for a few days before getting back to me. When I got off the phone the tech was of the mind that I have too many cores for the Quicktime codec to handle.
My system :
Windows 7 64bit
Dual Xeon E5-2687W: 16 Physical cores and 32 cores with Hyperthreading
32GB 1866 DDR3
3xNvidia GTX 680 4GB cards
SSD boot and seperate SSD media cache drives
8TB internal SAS RAID 5 using a ATTO card
Blackmagic Deckline Extreme 3D+ card
Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated as this is a huge boon to my workflow. Having purchased a $12K system for grading and rendering....not being able to use the ram preview in AE with multiple cores is a huge inconvenience.

Here is the requested taskmanager screenshot. As my test comp only has a single duplicated quicktime in it, it renders too fast to really catch the AE instances doing anything. So this is from a heavier comp. Settings are as pictured above with 3GB per core using 8 total cores of the 32. It did flash the bars.
Here is what I tried tonight:
- Followed the link on Quicktime having trouble with too many processors. Using MSCONFIG I dropped the recognized Processors to 21, 16, and 8 and tested all three settings. Each had the flashing bars issue. Again as usual, at random, sometimes 3 previews before showing up, sometimes the first preview run. I have noticed that the ram previews that take a little longer seem to be clean. Then sometimes it seems to fly through the preview, grabbing large chunks on the green progres bar above the timeline, or many little chunks very quickly....these are usually the preview runs that will show the flashing bars. I make a point of purging the cach between each one so it doesn't remember, plus I have disk media cache off, but sometimes I get the feeling it's remembering bits.
- I removed all the Quicktime Components from the QTComponents folder and tested it. Flashed the very first run without any quicktime components.
- Followed the Firewall or TCP instructions and made sure everything was allowed through ZoneAlarm. However I could not find the QT32 Server listed anywhere or figure out how to add it. No matter because I closed and force quit all of the firewall processes as well to make sure. Still flashed.
- I followed all the advice on the landing page for Quicktime-related problems
- I also tested out ram previews again thourougly with the same clip but converted to a Tiff sequence. No matter what I tried there was never any flashing in the ram preview with tiffs.
- I also re-tested the clean render output. Made a ram preview with the flashing bars, then without purging rendered it out to a quicktime file and there were no bars at all in the rendered output. I even tried duplicating this render output 6 times in the render queue and rendered them all at once. Not a single one had a flashing bar frame. I even played all 6 1080P uncompressed 4.2.2 YUV 10bit pieces off the RAID with no dropped frames or hichups.
- Killed every process in the taskmanager but for essential windows processes and the flashing bars were still present
- Set the priority to Real-time for every AE process including Adobe QT32 Server, Dynamiclinkmanager, and all the AE processes. Still flashed.
I am now considering disabling two of my GPUs in the device manager. However I'm a bit worried about disabling the wrong one and being locked out. Any thoughts? Is the computer to powerful for some process somewhere? Why only in RAM preview? Thanks again.

Jitters during RAM preview..

Hi everyone...
I use Adobe After Effects CC. My system config is
Issues i come across:
1. I get Jitters during RAM preview. Specially when i enable ray trace mode..
2. Also i get a pop up saying "Ray-Tracing on the GPU an approved NVIDIA graphics card and CUDA 5.0 or later. For now ray-tracing will use the CPU.
Can any body help me with the issues i face now pls?

Since you have CC, I would recommend that you avoid using the ray-traced renderer at all. You have access to a much more powerful (and faster-rendering) 3d option in AE. Click here: details of CINEMA 4D integration with After Effects

Frame counters during RAM preview and playback

It is my understanding that I should be able to view the number
of the currently processing frame during the course of a RAM preview
in both the timeline counter (in frame display mode) and in the info panel.
This is not working for me, and I would like to see if I am missing something.
Here is the status of the counters with a RAM preview in progress.
The only updating frame counter is at the bottom of the composition window,
and it would not be visible while processing a full-screen RAM preview.
RAM PREVIEW IN PROGRESS
This is the status of the counters during playback of the RAM preview.
The playback CTI is at about frame 90 of 912, but the counters in both the
composition window and timeline are frozen at zero, while the info panel
is frozen at the last frame number of the timeline (the last frame rendered).
RAM PLAYBACK IN PROGRESS
During spacebar playback, only the composition window counter displays
the current frame. The timeline counter is frozen at the frame number where
the CTI was parked when playback began (in this case, from frame 0).
The info panel only displays the framerate of the playback.
STANDARD PREVIEW PLAYBACK
If I stop either a RAM or Standard preview playback using the spacebar
the timeline counter will update to the CTI frame, but if playback resumes
the counter stays frozen where the CTI was parked when resuming playback.
I am experiencing this behavior using frames, timecode, ft+frames, and using
"From Current Time" RAM previews.
Please tell me I'm doing something wrong.

The question I posed was:
2. Is there a way to display the number of the frame that is currently
being processed during the course of a RAM preview?
The answer was:
>Info panel + timeline display set to frames.
Your tip to disable "Show Rendering Progress In Info Panel And Flowchart"
is very helpful. By unchecking the option, I do get a count of the currently
rendering frame during RAM preview... thanks for that!
It does seem a bit counter-intuitive to de-select this option in order to
view what might be the most the pertinent information (the current frame)
instead of "whizzing minutiae", but it does confirm I was missing something.
As for Mylenium's answer "timeline display set to frames", I can't seem
to get a running count in the timeline display under any rendering
or playback circumstance. I am a long-time Premiere user, and I was
expecting the timeline counter in AE to behave in a similar manner by
updating the current time during playback.
Is it the proper function for the timeline display to only update when parked?
If yes, I can get used to it. Again, I just want to know if I am missing something.
thanks

During ram preview ae cc wildly accessing system drive

After effects cc builds a ram preview of a 1920x1080 file without problem, the cache is on a secondary HD drive or SSD with plenty of speed and free space and there are 16 GB of RAM - but when the ram preview starts to play, sooner than 15 seconds it will become stilted and the system drive will start crackling like crazy. The activity of the system drive is so intense that the mac becomes sluggish and irresponsive.
An interesting aspect is that if it will keep playing as stilted as it is, after 2-3 cycles of the same ram preview range, the playback will become more fluid.
This happens - unbelievable- on a mac pro with 16 GB of RAM and latest Lion OS. All the files are on different drives than the system, and the cache was hard drives or ssd - all high speed, all internal drives.
And the latest surprise - assuming that maybe the system drive got too fragmented, I changed it for a brand new hd with all the programs transfered on the new drive from a time machine backup.
Same insane activity of the system drive at the less than 15 sec mark of ram preview playback.
Anyone encountered this wild accessing of the system drive by after effects cc during ram preview?

Good Points - you are partly right and my settings are attached here at the end.
I fiddled with them for a while (and even now they are too much in favor of AE) because it looked like they were not changing much from that weird behavior. The fact is that I tried most values - from max to minimum for background processes -nothing changed much except the speed of the rendering. The stumbling and the wild accessing of the main drive continued no matter what after the 14 seconds mark of all HD renderings.
Seeing than no one can help here either, yesterday I tried changing everything else in the Preferences to see what makes any difference in AE CC 12.1 and get over with this behavior.
And 2 unexpected settings really made a difference for me:
1-the QuickTime Video Preview, unchecked, ended the inescapable stumbling at the 14 s mark. I don't know how, but it made a crucial difference.
2- at the Memory page I checked the Reduce Cache size when system is low on memory. It prevented the RAM preview from using all the ram and leave the mac processes starving and turning the machine sluggish.
The Ram preview now happens in an interesting fashion (I have Memory Cleaner, a benign app, really useful to show how much RAm you really have at a given moment on a Mac). The green line above the timeline now expands until RAM decreases to low numbers like ~500MB RAM left. The Preview processing then waits a matter of seconds until the numbers increase again beyond 1.5 GB and then continues to extend the line - and so on until it reaches the end of the work area. There is no crackling anymore (accessing system HD).
I am using only SSDs and auxiliary HD drives (for output and source files) and all Ram previews now are completely quiet.
So, I have found my solution so far. But there still is a question the AE designers might want to think:
If they know that AE will unload the RAM onto the system HD, why don't they insert an option in the Prefs to allow this unloading to happen onto any secondary drive - choosen by the user.
A secondary drive unload at least will not interfere with the system processes - turning the mac sluggish and add insult to injury.
My numbers below could look tight now, but the previews are really fast and I quit all secondary processes on my mac when AE is working.

Audio Problems during Ram Preview

Hello
I'm having a unique issue with my audio playback. Video playback works fine, but when I ram preview or audio preview it makes my computer stall for 10 - 20 secconds, then plays. the audio ether sped up, or slowed down (different each time). Once this happens once, I can then ram preview this area again, and it works perfectly, untill I ether go to another track, composition, or program, at which point the problems starts all over again. Anyone have any ideas?
I'm using a mac tower 8-core 2008, just recently put in an intel SSD drive for OSX Mavericks. in 14GB ram.
The audio is a wave file.
Thanks for the help!
Ian

Hi Szalam and Martlomiej, thanks for the responce.
Heres the wave file that Im using
However I feel like its not the Wave file at fault, because the issue also occurs on myfootage audio which are AACs, these are their specs
its having trouble reading the audio files for some reason. Stange.
Let me know if there are any other ideas.
Thanks for the help!
Ian

Audio glitches during ram preview after CC update

Howdy folks,
Just wondered if anyone has noticed a degradation of performance in AfterEffects ram previews since updating CC? I have. Every time I do a ram preview the sound continually cuts out. I never had this problem before, now it's consistent. Any ideas how this can be fixed? Or is it possible to downgrade AE back to the last version?
Many thanks,
Fredo

To what CC update are you referring? If you're referring to the latest version 13, what happens if you open it in version 12?

How to speed-up the Ram Preview/Rendering using Adobe After Effects Cs 5.5?

Hi guys,
As the the title says, how can I increase the speed or make the ram preview render a lot faster or make the speed to the fullest?
I've done my researched already but I'm not sure if I did the right thing.
I will list down the things that I've done so far trying to make it faster.
1. Using the SECRET option (Pressing SHIFT) from the Preferences and ticked those two boxes - Disable layer Cache and Ignore sequence rendering errors.
2. Settings for the Memory and Multiprocessing. (Im not sure about this part, I mean I dont know if I did the right thing)
3. No other application's running
My Machine's specs are.
I'm using MSI GT70
-i7 CPU @ 2.30ghz
-16gb of RAM
-Nvidia GT675m
-64bit
I'd really appreaciated any help and a best settings for Mutltiprocessing.
Many thanks,

Most of the time I have MP turned off. Most of the plug-ins that I use are not MP aware and I seldom use AE's render Cue for rendering for delivery. I use AME and keep working on projects while I'm rendering.
Basic rules, at least 2GB per processor, at least 1 processor for other apps, Make sure the CPU's actually used matches the CPU's assigned, then test with your most common project. If you are doing something tha bogs down the system just turn it off.

RAM Preview/Renders begin after long delay.

This problem began last week. Suddenly, my RAM Previews and renders cause the spinning beach ball of death, which will last anywhere from 1-3 minutes before the actual RAM Preview or render process begins. The longest being 5 minutes, but that's only happened once.
I'm using a Mac Pro with 8GB RAM, 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel, OSX is current build at 10.5.7. And, I'm using CS4 AE.
So, what could be causing the atrocious delays before beginning the Previews and Renders?
Under preferences, I enabled disk cache, with max at 3500MB. The folder is located on an external drive connected with 800 Firewire. It's been set like this for a while without problems...
Conformed media cache is set for the same drive.
For memory prefs, I have:
Total AE mem usage at 6.5GB, other apps have 1.5.
Render mult frames simultaneously is checked, the longer RAM preview/faster rendering knob is set around midway point.
Hopefully I didn't leave anything out. Thanks for the help in advance.

Yes, it does happen in all of my projects.
The fonts are fine. I just created a new project, typed a regular text layer with a Times, and even that RAM preview took over a minute. The render was the same.
Well, lookee there. Just unchecked the option for rendering multi frames simultaneously and it instantly begins both processes.
Thanks for the help. Hopefully this doesn't crop up again.

Choppy animation RAM preview & rendered

Hi
I'm using After Effects CS5.5 Version 10.5.0.253
i'm working on an iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 -- 8 GB RAM, OXS Version 10.7.4.
i'm creating a fairly simple animation in After Effects, manipulating the position and scale of a still image. i've imported a JPEG i created in Photoshop. my problem is that i have to start zoomed in quite far on a detail of the image, and then zoom out all the way so i need to keep it pretty hi-res in order to have a decent quality when scaled at 150%….the smallest file size/resolution i've tried that has not gotten pixelated at full size is a JPEG 4667x3121 pixels @ 200 dpi resulting in a file size 1.4 MB
but the animation is still jumpy and choppy -- both in RAM preview as well as when rendered.
not sure if it makes a difference or not, but i have motion blur turned on
any help would be appreciated -- how can i make the smoothest animation possible?
is it exporting the still image in a different format or size or does it have to do with something i'm doing inside After Effects?
thank you

i've attached a number of screen shots, and i hope they help understand my project and problem better. sorry for the insufficient information so far, and thanks for offering to help.
here's a more detailed description:
the animation is 24 seconds long. starts zoomed in on a part of an image -- and as it pans around it in a circular motion, also zooms out.
attached photos called AE project position 1 - 3 show the beginning, middle and end points of the movements. you can see the keyframes for both position and scale. Rick, i took your advice regarding scale and used a file size that at 100% is almost the size i need. rather than zooming in to 150%, now i only have to start at 116%. in the first screenshot, i left the preview size at such a tiny zoom so that you could see the rather large size of the source image i'm using....much larger than the 1440x900 frame.
i have tried using keyframe interpolation and the curve on the position parameter to smooth out the speed. screenshot called AE project position curve shows this.
of course the problem is that if i do 'rove across time' with keyframe interpolation on the position keyframes, then i have to change the placement of the scale keyframes in order for the movement to still work as desired.
i have turned on motion blur on the layer.
i have then pre-composed the layer and in a new composition, added Timewarp effect (for the motion blur only). as you can (screenshot called AE project composition with effects) i set the shutter angle really high to get lots of blur to try to mask the choppiness.
i pre-composed the layer so that i could turn on the little rasterize button. to be honest, i don't know what this does or why it's not available on a layer before it's pre-composed, but it was recommended to me to have it turned on.
when i RAM preview that at about 25% display size, it is ALMOST perfectly smooth -- minus a couple small jitters that are practically negligible.
when i RAM preview at 100% it is very choppy.
i have tried rendering a few times with different settings. i have tried a few with Photo-JPEG codec at about 75% quality, both at full size as well as half (i'd like to keep it to 1440x900 export if possible)
i have also tried rendering to Apple ProRes 422, also 75% quality, tried both full size and half.
when i watch any of these rendered results in Quicktime 7, they are jittery. some more than others, but nothing has been satisfactorily smooth...
hope this helps understand my issue a bit better. if you have any advice about how i can make this the smoothest possible, i'd appreciate it.
thanks

No realtime playback during RAM preview

Ever since I upgraded to the newest MacPro, AE has been unable to play a RAM Preview in realtime. Even during the most simple of compesitions, RAM preview fluctuates between 20fps and 59.94fps and will never "lock in" to realtime. Resolution is set to full and zoom is set to 100%. We have compared all the settings to other, less powerful, machines in our studio and still cannot make it play realtime.
Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 Ghz - 6 Core intel Zeon
24 gb Ram
30 inch Apple Cinema Display
ATI Radeon HD 5870
OSX 10.6.6
Kona LHe 9.1
AE 10.5.0.253

I'm guessing the problem is with your Kona card. AJA has been having issues with CS5.5 and they just released updated drivers and have split the Adobe app plugins into their own installer now on the Windows side.
Unfortunately, you say you're already using the Kona 9.1 drivers so you're in the same boat as me with the poor playback in RAM previews.
Removing the Kona card instantly put my RAM previews back to normal, but it's not a proper solution.
Here are some tips I received from AJA support on this issue a few days ago:
OPTIMUM AE Settings for best performance:
Make sure the AJA video preview setting matches the sequence.
Use a RGBA video preview setting and not RGB 10-bit.
In AE preferences -> video preview set Output Quality to Faster.
Go to Project Settings -> set color settings -> depth and set to 8-bits per channel.
Make sure you are viewing at 100% during playback.
I just put the Kona 3G card in last week and CS5.5 instantly had playback issues in both AE and Premiere. I got the 9.1 drivers AJA released this week and everything was fine after that! Halfway through a project yesterday, my RAM previews started lagging again. I'm working with AJA to resolve and if I get it figured out, I will post the solution here.

Timecode display during RAM preview playback?

I can't seem to find any timecode that reports back the CT while doing a RAM preview. Am I correct in assuming this does not exist?
As a workaround I added a solid layer and added the timecode effect to it. Seems weird there is no playback timecode reported in any windows during a RAM preview so I must be missing something.
Thanks,
Cliff

To get a display of timecode in the comp window that's what you need to do. The time indicator in the timeline does not advance in a ram preview. The info palette only shows the fps if enabled.
The timecode effect applied to another layer or an expression from the expression library for timecode applied to an empty text layer will do the trick.

After Effects CS5 crashing during RAM Preview

After Effects CS5 was working just fine less than 24 hrs ago.
Now I cant even get it to RAM preview some text moving across the screen as a test.
It keeps getting hung up on "Background Process Status Loading Projects..."
Never an issue before. Didnt update or change ANYTHING.
Of course this happens right in the middle of a job...nice....
Utterly frustrated.
Mac OS 10.7.5
2 X 3 Dual Core Intel Xeon (one of the earlier Mac Pro Intel towers)
19GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

Funny you said that.
That is what i thought the problem might be. I am going to archive some stuff on my hard drive.
That is when the app started having issues. When the project started getting larger and having more elements.
In fact, now i am getting a weird wobble when I render a sequence from premiere. If I only render part of it, it doesnt happen.
Maybe I need to free up some space on my hard drive...?

I've had a problem with previewing rendered video files

Hey guys, I'm Justin,
thanks in advance.
so when I render video files in fce, the video usually renders fine, but on the canvas the video just replays the first and last frame of the rendered video, making it look like a jumbled mess. but, when I export it as a quicktime file it runs just fine, I think the problem is in my canvas and I don't know how to fix it.
Also I recently upgraded my system from 2gb of ram to 4gb of ram, can fce recognise this or do I need to do something fancy
Thank you so much,
Justin

Hello, Justin, and welcome to the forum.
Where is the video coming from and how are you getting it into FCE? Almost always, your best bet is to convert your media into a format with which FCE works natively before you bring it into the program. If you do that, rendering and lots of other issues are minimized.

Audio Slow/Off-Tempo during RAM Preview & Rendered Video

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