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

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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.

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?

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

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?

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

"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 (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

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)

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

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)

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?

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.

CS6 RAM preview short and "needs 2 or more frames" errors

Hello everyone,
I've been researching this one for over a week now and still haven't found a solution. The short story it is that my RAM preview is limited to only a few seconds regardless of work area, but I've got over 4Gb of RAM available and open for use. CPU is barely being used as well. I'm also intermittently getting the "After Effects Error: RAM Preview requires 2 or more frames to playback," which confuses me as I have 4Gb or ram available. RAM is still close to 4Gb during and after preview. This has been a repeated problem, not matter how many times the memory is purged, the RAM is free'd up with the Memory Clear App (as recommended in previous threads), or the computer is restarted. Memory and Cache have been optimized for best performance as well. Also, final renders are fine and have no problems. It's only with RAM preview and previewing the project that I'm having trouble. It seems to me that the project is being bottlenecked somewhere but not sure where or how. To open, here's the system I'm running it on. It may not be a brute but it should be enough to handle the work.
System:
Program: Adobe After Effects CS6 (11.0.4.2
System: Mid 2010 iMAC, 27-inch
Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
RAM:   8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 (two 4gb cards)
Graphics: ATI Radion HD 5750 1024 MB
Software: OS X 10.9.4
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD Green 2TB Sata drive
                    -6.0 Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive
Project Specifics: (Has happened across other similar projects)
Project: Educational video with graphics, simple animations, and link to Premiere Pro timeline.
               -33 layers (most are highlight boxes and animated arrows)
                         -13 small PNG images (Arrows and simple graphics with 1 3D layer)
                         -7 Short Compositions
                         -7 Text Layers
                         -5 shape layers
                         -1 Premiere Pro Timeline
Composition Settings: 1280 x 720 at 23.976fps
Project Location: Company Server
Problems
-Ram preview only renders a few seconds, regardless of Work Area or "From Current Time" enabled.
-Fairly frequent, "After Effects Error: RAM preview requires two or more frames to playback."
-Scrolling through project is very pixelated.
When Problems Occurs: When trying to perform a RAM preview.
Attempted Solutions:
- Use of Memory Clean App to open up more RAM. (Makes little to no difference when problem is at peak.)
- Shut down and restart computer (Does work for a short time but problem reappears within an hour)
- Closing all apps and running just After Effects. (Little to no difference)
- Turning off motion blur, turning on 3D draft and using Proxies to simplify project. (Little to no difference)
- Purge: All Memory. (No difference)
- Stopping any unnecessary processes in Activity Monitor. (No difference)
Additional Information:
-Projects seem to take a little longer than normal to open. (1-2 min max.)
Thanks in advance for any support on this issue. It's been quite a stressful timesink.

Unfortunately the problem has come back again after an hour of use this morning. To show how much RAM I have available at the time the issue appears, I've included the Memory Clean window showing 4.44GB of ram available at the time of incident. It first happened a few minutes ago with roughly 1GB available, so I and purged all memory in After Effects and cleaned the RAM with the Memory Clear app, but still no such luck. I've been working with the same actions and material all morning so nothing new was introduced to the project when the error occurred. The work I was performing at the time was animating highlight boxes over a screen capture, but again it seems to happen regardless of what I'm working on. I'm going to restart the computer and see how long it makes it before needing another reset. Any other ideas as to what it could be? Also, if there's any more information that might be helpful to solving the issue please let me know and I'll be happy to share. Thank you again for the support!
Szalam, thank you for the link. I had been to the page previously but am going back to watch them again to see if I missed something. If it is a bottleneck, I'm not sure where it could be as of yet.
And just to make sure I'm not making any other simple mistakes VVV

RAM preview error

So,
About an hour ago I started to encounter "After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback".
I've found threads about this in the search but they seem to be towards the audio bug or Mac specific.
I'm on a regular comp with only plug used Trapcode Particular.
I'm using latest version of After effects CC (not 2014).
I'm on PC... To be more specific I'm on a HP Z800 workstation with 24gig ram & Quadro 4000 graphics card. And win 7.
I'm not maxing anything out and the comp is fairly basic. I've cleaned the cache and everything.. rebooted the software and rebooted the computer.. still same problem.
Anyone encounter the same problem and solved it?

Working with this further I discover that the error also appears if I tweak any of the transformations settings for the layer and add a parent to it.
I actually found a workaround.. I have an adjustment layer with Reel smart blur and glow on it (which I forgot to mention) which seems to be connected to the problem. I put the problematic layer on top and it seems to work.. Perhaps I maxed out the amount of layers RSMB could handle? Weird because it worked as long as I didn't parent it or changed the transform settings?..
A well.. problem solved for now.

ERROR: RAM Preview Issue

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