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.

Similar Messages

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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...?

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

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?

CTI jumps frames during RAM Preview

I find myself having to build a graphic opener with music for the first time in AE. Needing to time elements to the music, I've discovered something that probably has been happening since I've owned AE, but I've never paid attention to til now. When previewing, my CTI moves forward by jumping several frames at a time, instead of playing smoothly. This makes timing to the music beat all but impossible, at least for me. Is this a normal thing for AE?
Here is a sample of what I'm talking about...
http://www.creativeillusions.biz/AE_CTI/

Yes, OpenGL is enabled, as well as hardware acceleration. Here are my system specs...
Asus P6X58D Premium
Core i7 950
24GB RAM
nVidia Quadro 4000 - driver version 267.24
Windows 7 Premium 64bit
System Drive - WD Caviar Black 500GB SATA
2nd Drive(Pagefile, Previews) - WD Velociraptor 10K drive(600GB)
Media Drive - 1GB RAID5 (4 - WD Caviar Black 500GB drive)
Matrox MX02 Mini
CS5 Production Premium
I should mention that I have Nucleo Pro 3 running, but this happens as well with previews being handled by NP3, and with it disabled. The current driver from nVIDIA is 270.61. I guess I can try it out, but I don't like getting too far ahead of what Adobe has cleared.

Audio playback or RAM preview is scrambled or jumps around in After Effects CS5 or Premiere Pro CS5

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/851/cpsid_85192.html
Are there any news on this? When can we expect the update/bug-fix? This is really a major bug for me, cause I'm dealing with lots of old projects totally relying on aiff-files. I really don't want to convert all my files, re-connect it in the project and so on.
Any news?

We're working on it.

Realtime Ram Preview Fail in Color Management is on

Hi. I m work with Ari Alexa footage as shown VIDEO: After Effects and Alexa - The Expurgated Version by ChrisZwar And I enebled mercury transmit in video preview preferences. When I want to ram preview After effects does not preview in real time. In info window appearce red text fps: 0,6/25 (NOT realtime) Note: project working color space is on
What should I do in this case

BeraT, if you disable Display Color Management (View menu > Use Display Color Management) and Mercury Transmit, do you get real-time playback during RAM preview?
Display color management and video preview in After Effects both impose a processing burden. As each frame is sent for display, additional work must be done to apply a color transformation or a dimensional transformation, respectively. If you have both color management and video preview enabled, both transformations are applied, plus an additional color transformation for the Mercury Transmit monitor. None of these transformations are cached, they are done live, on-the-fly and require additional processing at playback time.
The net result is that both color management and video preview require more processing power during playback. Larger frames, higher frame rates, and higher color bit depth increase the amount of processing power required, due to the increased memory requirements of the frames.
A faster processor would help give real-time playback more often, but you can also increase playback speed by lowering the memory requirements of the RAM preview frames: reduce the resolution in the Composition panel or the playback resolution in the Preview panel, reduce the project's color bit depth setting, or reduce the Frame Rate or increase the Skip rate in the Preview panel. Disabling the Use Display Color Management option will also help, as it removes one of the processing steps.
All of that aside, if you aren't able to achieve real-time playback when both Display Color Management and Mercury Transmit are disabled, that tells you the problem is coming from somewhere else. You'll need to provide more information about what's happening in your comp.

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

No realtime playback during RAM preview

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