RAM preview is always zoomed in

This is my first day trying to use after effects. Whenever I use RAM preview, the preview is zoomed into something like a 30 pixel square So, I exit the preview move zoom in the composition panel away from "fit", then back to "fit" and preview and it renders the entire preview. Then if I render again it's zoomed into a 30 pixel square, then I do the back and forth thing with zoom, over and over.
Do you know what I could have done that makes it do this? I want it to display the entire area not be zoomed into a grid of giant pixels.

First try resetting your workspace. You'll find the option at the bottom of the workspace menu. Second, reset the Preview Panel options by clicking on the little menu icon at the top of the Preview Panel tab. If neither of those steps work then delete your preferences file by pressing and holding Ctrl/Cmnd + Aat/Option + Shift as you click on the program icon to open After Effects. If that doesn't work tell us the version of AE you're using down to the last decimal point and your OS and show us a screenshot of your composition with all the properties of all the layers in question revealed by selecting the layers in the timeline and pressing the U key twice.

Similar Messages

Ram preview green line goes away when changing zoom level

I did a ram preview of my project, about 12 seconds long. Everything looks good until I want to zoom in or out on the comp, then the green line disappears and I have to render it over again. I don't remember AE doing this before. If I zoom to say 25% and render part of the comp, then zoom to 50%, that part with the green line is gone. I can render a different segment of the comp while in 50% and switch back to 25%, and the green line from when I rendered at 25% is back. I've turned off adaptive resolution in the fast preview options, and I turned off the disk cache. Is this a bug or just the way AE works now? I'm using CS6 version 11.0.2 on Win7.

Actually, I think I am. I didn't notice it before, but when I zoom in, if I have the resolution set to Auto, it changes between quarter, half and full depending on the zoom level. I've never noticed that before, or maybe they only recently made it so it didn't say Auto all the time, but now says what effective resolution it's set to. So is that the answer to my problem? Leave it on full resolution (or whatever I need at the time)?

After effects cs6 ram preview saying NOT REAL TIME

Every time I try to ram preview something in AE CS6 at 59.94 fps it always previews it at only 11 fps and it says Note: zoom is not 33.3% I have my Composition settings to 59.94 fps and the quality to quarter but nothing helps? Im using 6GB of Ram and have 2 of my 4 CPU's used for it.. is there something I'm missing?

Without proper system info, comp settings, details about your footage etc. nobody can say anything. you are merely throwing us random fragments of info but leaving out the important parts.
Mylenium

After Effects cs6 RAM Preview NOT REAL TIME

So every time I create a new composition at 59.94 fps and insert a video file (.wmv file usually) that is as well at 59.94 fps and I try to RAM Preview just the raw footage it says the same thing every time (the picture). I always change the quality to Quarter and I tried the 33.3% zoom and it doesn't help. I have the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously box checked and I'm using 2 of my 4 CPUs and 6.4 GB of RAM available for AE... Any help?
My Computer specs: I have a Intel Core i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz processor, 8 GB of RAM, A NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
If you need any other information please let me know and I'll give it to you. Thanks.

Are you doing a RAM to preview or just pressing the spacebar? Are you new to aftereffects?
FAQ: Why does RAM preview only play part of my composition?

When previewing images by clicking on the thumbnail in an Event for example, I've been finding that many images preview in a 'zoomed in' way so only a small part of the photos is previewed in a highly magnified view.

When previewing images by clicking on the thumbnail in an Event for example, I've been finding that many images preview in a 'zoomed in' way so only a small part of the photos is previewed in a highly magnified view.
Initially I could find no cause. Then I tried right click - Edit and on the affected images, always get this warning:
"Image Cannot Be Edited - This photo was previously edited with another application or with an early version of Iphoto. Duplicate this photo to edit it." and a "Duplicate To Edit" Button is displayed.
The external Editor defined for iPhoto is Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Now, I reckon the MUST be others out there affected by this same apparent Preview bug, yet my searches have not revealed any answers. Also seems impossible to find a contact number for adobe???
Thanks

Start '''[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode Firefox in Safe Mode]''' {web Link} by holding down the '''<Shift ''(Mac Options)'' >''' key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?

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.

RAM Previews No Longer Real Time

Work computer.   Mid 2010 Mac Pro with 64GB of RAM. Running After Effects version 11.0.4.2.   Multiprocessing off.   AJA Control Panel v3.
1920 x 1080 comps, 29.97 fps, no 3D.
The Mac was running Mountain Lion and RAM previews were FINE. Zero issues.             Ever.
The computer was upgraded to Mavericks 10.9.5.      I use the term upgrade loosely, BTW.       Now ... RAM previews no longer play in real time. Most I get - and it fluctuates - is 19, 20, 23 frames per second, never 29.97.    Sometimes it blasts all the way up to 40, 45, 47 like it’s playing catch-up, but that’s rare.
- Restarted the computer. No change.
- All projects.   Makes no difference, old legacy projects or new.
- Even simple 1-layer projects with simple position animation, no effects - not real time.
- 8 bit mode, not just 16 or 32 bit.
- Color management both on and off.
- Simulate output on and off.
- Preferences -> Video Preview was set to AJA, so I tried Computer Monitor Only. That doesn’t work either.
- Full Rez, Half, Quarter. . .. . doesn’t matter.    Never real-time.
I've seen others ask about this issue but none of the posts ever resulted in "you need to set 'this' to 'that'" etc.        Have any suggestions?
Thank you,
Marc

Marc Trzepla wrote:
I am not a programmer but I've always run under the assumption that things "get faster", not slower. The fact that what once worked flawlessly was crippled by an "upgrade" boggles me.
Mavericks and Yosemite have both have quite a number of issues when folks upgrade to them.
Apple is really starting to bother me lately. First the attitude evident in the Final Cut debacle, then the Mac Pro annoyance, and now the OS upgrade issues... I know smartphones are making them boatloads of money, but they really seem to be neglecting their professional users who've been with them for years before iPhones were even a thing!

Problem with RAM preview in Windows 7, AE 5.5

Hi there, I'm kind of a newbe with After Effect 5.5, have to make an animation for school and although I've already figured out how to make some magic with the program, I'm stuck on the RAM preview (yes, the one you get by hitting 0 if anyone asks). It gets stuck after 15-22 fps and that's it. I've searched forums, and comments and articles and whatsoever and the authores where having this issue when having Macs. Well, I don't, that's what I have:
64 bit Windows 7
Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU @ 2,00GHz
6,00 RAM
graphic card NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
(any more details needed?)
I've also tried many combinations with checking/unchecking OpenGL, changing Video Preview (Computer Monitor Only or IEEE 1394 Pal <=don't even know what that is, but maybe you'll want to know), and of course Multiprocessing (image below) turning it off ond on.
Compositions in my animation are for now just jpg's, png's and some psd layers, with some scaling and small dropshadows, nothing too fancy for now so I'm even more surprised I get the "Insufficient RAM" allert. (AE is the only running program except for GoogleChrome to search for possible solutions) Of course I need to add the sound but it's pointless until I figure out the RAM preview problem.
I think that's all the details, but if you need more just ask.
Please help me guys (and try to answer in simple English), it's really getting on my nerves and my deadline is coming...

I'm not sure that I completely understand what you are saying. Depending on the amount of available ram and the size and frame rate of the composition (not in your post) you may only get 15 to 22 seconds of playback. If it's only playing back at 15 to 22 FPS then you're choking your system. The first thing to do is to try setting the resolution of our comp to half and the zoom factor to 50%.
Now that I take a close look at your screen shot, that's not going to help much. Surprise, surprise! You don't have nearly enough ram to have Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously checked.You need 4GB per processor minimum. With 8 CPU's you'll need 32 GB of ram to take advantage of all your cores for AE and you'll still need 1 of them for background apps. Take a close look at the settings:
How much ram is allocated for background apps? 1GB, How many CPU's will be used for the background apps like writing to disk and reading from disk, which are necessary for ram preview? 0, zero, nada. That's not exactly accurate or your system wouldn't run at all, but it shows the problem clearly. You've manually choked your fairly powerful computer by tying upp it's resources in a manner that causes it to choke on memory and read write cycles. Even with 6GB of ram you've starved the system to death.
You've also allocated all of your ram to AE. Don't do that. Leave at least 1 GB for other apps, 2 would be better.
Redo the settings and AE should work just fine. BTW, this info is clearly stated in the ram and memory allocation help pages for AE.

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

AE CC 2014.1.1 the plague of "ram preview needs 2 or more frames"

As i said abot Premiere CC 2014.1, for me AE CC 2014.1.1 is the worst version of this sw ever on my system. Specs:
i7980x
GTX680 4GB
24GB ram
Asus P6T deluxe mobo
2 SSD Intel, one for AE cache
I'm experiencing continuos crash from AE. I'm on a big project, as always, and performance is terrible. After a bit of time of working AE became terribly slow. The "blu" bar under the preview window start load again and again. I move the mouse, loading, i scroll the window, loading, press caps lock to stop the preview....loading. This is the sympthon. After this kind of wierd performance i know that my ram preview will not start again. The infamous message will pop up and doesn't matters what i do, purge, format ram or whatever. the only way is to close AE and reopen it.
Now...i'm using AI files or PSD files, so i've to run AE and Photoshop or AI all toghether....after some minutes...the bar loading, the performance slows down and the message pop up again.
The ridicoulous fact is that when i render the project i have the ram usage at 19% and cpu usage at max 60%. So my renders are really long (about 10hr for 2 minutes of animations), but my system is sitting there doing nothing. Really odd...i can use 12GB of ram and half of the cores at this point, doesn't matter for AE performance...

Right! It's got a little bit worse... After the 'RAM preview needs 2 or more frames' window I purged then restarted and all was back on track for about 5 minutes, then it happened again and then the following series of warnings have locked AE in a cycle of warnings...
Below is the series of warnings I've just received followed by my memory and cache settings and then the memory left on my computer.
then
my memory settings
my cache settings
and the memory left on my computer
The file is 'just' a series of After Effects solids with masks (about 40), rigged together with Duik IK (not the puppet tool thing just the one that links layers together) and some wavs for the sound file.
Like I say I've probably done hours of lipsyncing over the last 15 years with far far heavier files (using HD footage and a far bigger comp with psd files) and I certainly haven't had this kind of persistent problem and it's only since I installed CC2014 last week...
grrrr and arrrrgh

RAM preview HELP!!!

Why whenever I want to RAM preview always goes full screen even when the full screen (off) uncheck?
HELP!!!!

It sounds like it's time to delete your preference file and rebuild. Carl/cmnd + alt/option + shift held down while opening the option to delete preferences and start over. Just make sure you have the keys held down before you click the program icon.

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 CS5 crash on RAM Preview OS X

Hello Friends. I've had a pretty great experience with AE CS5 so far, but I've been getting more and more recurring issues of AE locking up the entire computer on occasional RAM Previews. I get a spinning wheel, and the computer becomes unusable. I can usually change open applications with the keyboard, but they do not respond. In moments even that stops working and have a beach ball of death. Unable to force quit in any way, wether through menus, contextual menus, or keyboard commands. It takes a hard shutdown with the power button to get out.
The only thing I can find that *may* also be a connection is that I normally always save right before a RAM preview. Though it doesn't happen every time, could it be that I'm freaking out the app before it can fully write the changes to the saved file? Each time it happens, I do have a sense that I'm working too quickly and am waiting for it to catch up.
Not sure if anyone else has experienced it. Just wanted to let people know I've run into it more than a few times.

Thanks for the reply. I've been getting fewer problems by simply pacing myself before I RAM preview, but they have not entirely gone away. Here are my settings as of now.
Footage layers are hand drawn scans animated in 3-D space, but all on the same z plane (virtual animation stand - Reference Still Below). Very few effects. A lot of blending modes.
2 x 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS X V 10.6.3
AE Memory Settings:
     Installed RAM: 12 GB
     RAM for other Apps: 3 GB
     Render Multiple Frames Simult: ON
     Installed CPUs: 8
     CPUs reserved for other Apps: 0
     RAM per Background CPU 2 GB
     Actual CPUs used: 3
Media & Disk Cache Settings:
     Enable Disk Cache ON
     Max Disk Cache Size: 2000 MB
     Write XMP IDs ON
     Create Layer Markers ON

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 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 is always zoomed in

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