RAM Preview Optimization

I know there are a bunch of threads about Ram preview and how to make it render faster on the forum already. However, I have read through a lot of them and tried most everything suggested that I could do or understand how to do and nothing has changed my current dilemma.
I am using a 15" MacBook Pro (2012) 750GB HD, 16GB RAM
OS X 10.9.5
2.4GHz Intel Core i7
After Effects CC 13.0.2.3
I am working on a Lyric Video right now in After Effects with no outside footage, everything in the video has been created inside of AE or drawn in Illustrator or Photoshop and then brought into AE.
I did everything suggested at this link for optimization in AE
optimizing for performance: Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects | After Effects region of interest
The only thing I didn't do yet is get an external drive. I used to have one that I put all my projects on for After Effect, Photoshop, Illustrator and even Logic Pro
(My main use for My MacBook is Logic Pro/Recording Audio/Music Production. But I have been using After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator to make visual media to go along with the music I make)
But I recently found out my 1TB "WD My Passport Studio" external drive was only 5200rpms, So for this video I am making and the couple before it I have been only using the internal 750GB HD on my MacBook Pro (which has 5400rpm) to save my AE projects to.
I know it's not the best case scenario but I had just upgraded my MacBook to 16GB RAM and I still have 440GB of available space on my 750GB HD so I'd figured I would see how much the RAM upgrade alone really did. Until it became necessary to get an external drive (and make sure I purchased the RIGHT one for me.
...With the 16GB RAM upgrade everything was much better, I can now have multiple applications such as After Effects, Illustrator and FireFox all running at the same time (I didn't have a chance of pulling that off before 16GB RAM). Also what improved is while I'm playing videos using RAM Preview they usually do not lag anymore. But the problem is now when I want to RAM preview it is taking forever to render, about 4-5seconds per frame, so trying to edit even a 15 second portion of my video can become seriously dull and really kill workflow.
Like I said before I tried most optimization settings within After Effects that, that link I posted will suggest to do. But nothing has changed. I'm basically posting this to see if anyone thinks I might have overlooked something within my After Effects or MacBookPro settings that will help my dilemma or if they think I just need an external drive to save all my After Effects projects onto. And if that is the problem, which external drive do they suggest?

Once transform (Position, Scale, Rotation, Opacity) keyframes are set I seldom if ever touch them again in the process of building a scene. I already know they work so the only thing left is ink and color or Lights, Effects, Styling and final color grading. After the motion is good, and motion is the biggest part of Kinetic Typography projects is the motion, I seldom do a ram preview that is longer than 30 frames because I'm confident of the action in the scene.
But that's the thing. Most of my animations are simply using motion such as Position, Scale, Rotation and Opacity. And that's all I have done to them so far...Yes some Text I use animation presets on, but most of my layers (whether they be Text, Shape, or Vector Image layers) only have motion key frames done to them and nothing else. I have not even messed with the lighting, color grading or shadows of the composition yet. So that's why I am a bit frustrated that these previews are taking so long especially when my composition is not even at that complex of a point yet.
What are your thoughts on the "fast previews" button? With "Adaptive Resolution" vs. "Draft" mode. And why do you think my "Draft" mode is greyed out? But all my other options (Adaptive Resolution, Fast Draft, Wire Frame, and Full Quality) are not?
I ought to do a tutorial on KT or info graphic animations because they are very popular and most folks work way too hard at putting them together. I actually usually spend more time in Illustrator creating the starting graphics and editing the sound track than I spend animating. I create a huge Illustrator comp that has all of the elements in their final positions, import that as a comp, then resize the comp from the bottom left to HD, add a camera and camera dolly null and begin.
If you did a tutorial from start to finish on how to make a kinetic typography video and optimize workflow as much as possible that would be AMAZING! and if you do definitely let me know! haha
Here's a free animation preset for 3D layers that moves the layer into it's final position from a defined starting point and fades it in and out if the Setup check box is unchecked. Enjoy: 3DSlideshow.ffx
I appreciate you giving me a free 3D animation preset but when I downloaded it from safari and clicked on it it just came up as code. I tried to drag and drop it into my "effects & presets" panel in AE but that didn't work either. I'm sure there is a specific folder I am supposed to save the the 3D animation file to, I just don't know what folder that is or where i can find it on my HD
While I'm thinking about sound tracks, if you load a narration track into Premiere Pro and analyze the audio you can create markers that will show up on the audio track in AE that have the words as marker labels. This speeds up animating about 500% because you don't have to do any audio scrubbing to figure out the timing. Here's how to do that from Adobe TV:
Accelerated Editing with Enhanced Speech Analysis in Premiere Pro CS5 | Adobe Story CS5 Feature Tour | Adobe TV
Import the audio track into AE and yo'll be amazed.
That sounds like an awesome way to save time! But I simply do not have Premiere Pro . I have After Effects, Adobe Bridge and Media Encoder CC... and then Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign CS6 and Adobe Acrobat XPro

Similar Messages

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 CS6: How to Ram preview or playback in smooth real-time everytime?

Hi guys,
I would like to know how to Ram preview or playback in smooth real-time everytime? I'm using a videohive template and adding in my footages to the media holder comps. The AE template is complex I guess.
Hee's the problem, everytime I make a change to text, add a footage replacement or make any change at all, I have to completely render and wait a long time to see my final product in "Real-time"/smooth. Is there someway that I can render out the whole thing once and even though I make a change the entire video will play smoothly without rendering time?
PC Specs:
HP 510t
Windows 8 Pro x64 bit
16GB Ram
i7 2600 CPU @3.4 GHz
GTX 660Ti

Proxies don't affect rendering beyond the point of reducing the resolution and thus the nuimer of pixels that need to be processed, but since the retain the effect properties at full resolution, e.g. a large blur still renders just as slow. They are more a means of reducing file I/O bandwidth while working really.... As I said, the best way to optimize this would probably be to restructure the project so parts that don't change reside in separate pre-compositions and can use the disk cache.
Mylenium

Ram preview keeps resetting

aae is SO frustrating because on sony vegas you clicked play and on a certain point it plays straight away, now i have to wait ages for it to load for me to preview, then i change something and the proccess repeats itself
any ways i dont no off?
im using 5.5
so mayb thats the case?
-adam

Sony Vegas, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Avid are all NLE's (Non Linear Editors) and they are specifically designed to playback a video stream. With any of them, if you stack enough layers or effects on the video they will have to render a new video stream based on pixel based calculations for every pixel in the stack. This rendering, especially for HD sources or for complex plug-ins, will take quite a bit of time.
After Effects, Flame, Fusion, Shake -- are all pixel based image processing applications that act very much like Photoshop. They calculate the values of every pixel in every frame, come up with a new pixel, and then play those pixels back as a video stream. More importantly, AE and all the other pixel based compositing apps, always work internally with completely uncompressed pixel data. NLE's rely on codecs and in some cases, hardware, to playback the video. It's an entirely different way of working with moving images.
In After Effects you enable the preview by loading a bunch of frames into RAM then the video stream is played back. You start the process with the 0 key on the numeric keypad and not with the Space Bar as you do in nearly every NLE ever created. The length of the preview depends entirely on how much free ram you have available and it takes some time to generate these new pixels. The more layers, the more effects, the more calculations that need to be performed the longer it will take to process the RAM preview. There's currently no way around this rendering time. A modern HLE will handle an amazing number of video streams simultaneously, but as soon as you exceed the capability of the system you're stuck with a render. Most NLE's, given the same number of calculations, actually take a little longer than After Effects to do the same kind of effects. Open GL, and other GPU acceleration helps many NLE's achieve higher performance but it has yet to be implemented into a pixel based compositing app. The sad truth of the matter is that if you want to do compositing in any of the available compositing apps, you have to wait for renders. They are getting better. Memory management and efficiency is improving. GPU accelerated effects are being added, but for now, that's about as good as it gets.
You can optimize your system so that you get the best performance. All I know about yours is that you're running Windows. If you can give some specifics we can point you to some suggestions for improving performance.
I hope this helps. As long as you use After Effects to create shots and don't try to make it do the work of a NLE you should be fine. Movies come from NLE's, amazing shots come from AE.

Unable to create image buffer after RAM preview

Running into an odd and frustrating error. Built a comp using the new Ray-traced 3D renderer and now I'm regretting being an early adopter big time with all the problems I've been encountering with it. The latest comes whenever I do a longer RAM preview in an attempt to watch the whole duration of my comp. It will get to about 170 frames or so, at which point I've interrupted by pressing spacebar because I don't need to see all the way to the end of my work area (around 220 frames). It'll play the RAM preview back fine, and even loop it, but as soon as I stop playback, I get this error message: "After Effects warning: Unable to create image buffer." There's only one button: "okay" and as soon as I click it the same error pops up again and it will never go away, forcing me to close AE from the task manager. I've taken to saving before every RAM preview like I used to do with Flash before previewing my buggy swfs for fear I'll lose all my work after previewing. Any ideas about what might be causing this?
Some more details about my comp:
1920x1080 @ 29.97
Ray-traced 3D
About 70 3D layers (I'm guessing this is my downfall - new renderer not designed for this many layers?)
Running Windows 7 Professional
i7 2600K
32GB RAM
2x GTX 570 video cards running latest driver (301.42, CUDA 4.2.1)
508GB free on my 2TB internal drive where the project and cache lives
From my GPU info window in case it's useful:
Fast Draft:
Available
Texture Memory:
600.00 MB
Ray-tracing:
GPU
OpenGL
Vendor:
NVIDIA Corporation
Device:
GeForce GTX 570/PCIe/SSE2
Version:
3.0.0
Total Memory:
1.20 GB
Shader Model:
4.0 or later
CUDA
Driver Version:
4.2
Devices:
2 (GeForce GTX 570, GeForce GTX 570)
Current Usable Memory:
1.04 GB (at application launch)
Maximum Usable Memory:
1.25 GB

Yeah, some buffer is very likely not flushing when you interrupt the preview and then there is no more memory on the graphics hardware. Consider setting the work area and your preview options to use only the work area. if it finishes the preview "correctly", it may not suffer the issue. Beyond that - raytracing doesn't/ shouldn't care about the number of items. The math is such, that it makes no difference whether you render a million polygons or just one. Of course there are still limitations due to the GPU dependency, but I doubt you ever truly exhaust the cards' geometry buffers. Compared to pixel data that is a small amount...
Mylenium

AE CS4 - why such poor RAM preview on my FAST machine?

Hi all, I just installed After Effects CS4 - I have a smokin fast mchine: quadcore Zeon 3.20 GHz, hyperthreading turned on, nvidia quadrofx 3800 with current driver, 12 GB DDR3 RAM, windows 7 64bit ... can you PLEASE help me troubleshoot a problem: even on the simplest compositions, a moving picture or a moving piece of type, the RAM preview stutters along, the current time indicator hops along at a choppy pace, images in the frame dont look like they're moving smoothly, and all i get is about 6 seconds of RAM preview ... seems to me that I used to get better performance on a MUCH MUCH slower machine under windows XP ... i have looked around the forums and seem the advice on multiprocessor options and the like, but nothing I do seems to help ... do any of you have any advice for me to improve my performance??? if you have any questions about my setup or preferences, let me know, I will be on this until I get what I expect out of my (otherwise incredibly fast) machine

Hi Todd, thanks again for your reply ... FYI, I bought the FX3800 for Avid editing, for which it is the qualified video card, and supports distributed processing in the Avid along with my DX HD hardware BOB - I had hoped it would work well with After Effects, too, but I do understand the Adobe is very transparent about the fact that, as long as your card has OpenGL support, probably best to sink your $$$ into more RAM or faster CPU .. but to stay on topic, I am just very stunned that I am not getting better playback with my system ... I have the most recent Nvidia drivers ... I have 2 NEC 2490WUXi2 each connected through DVI-D to my video card, each runnign at its native 1920x1200 res, 59 hertz ... the programs I have installed are Adobe CS4 Production Premium, Win7 64bit, MS Office 2007 Enterprise, latest version of Quick Time, Media Player version 11, and NERO 9 ... you dont think that one of these video player apps (like media player or QT) are messing with my screen performance do you? what about Nero 9, have you heard any compatibility or display problems associated with this app? would unistalling any of these programs be a troubleshooting technique that you'd attempt?
Finally, when you say "an issue with a bottleneck of drawing to the screen" what do you mean exactly? 'cause this kinds sounds like a goood description of what I am seeing ... what might be the cause of such a bottleneck, I am willing to try anything ...
Thanks, sir, for your reply!
Derek Reid
Trader Multimedia Inc.
www.tradermm.com
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:46:43 -0600
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: AE CS4 - why such poor RAM preview on my FAST machine?
Just one thing to cut down a frequent misconception:
Your nice graphics card doesn't do much for After Effects performance.In fact, trying to use OpenGL for rendering (including rendering of previews) can cause problems.
I recommend turning OpenGL rendering off for all but interactions. I.e., choose the http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WSAF696587-2D81-42e2-B248-4C5C2B7D3614a.html and turn off http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a4f2dff7-79e8a.htm l. OpenGL is not compatible with Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing.
I'm not saying that OpenGL is your problem. Rather, because you mentioned your nice graphics card, I just had to stress that you need to forget about that with regard to After Effects. It's not really relevant.
It may be that the jerkiness is an issue with a bottleneck of drawing to the screen. (I don't know, but it's possible.)
Your hard disk being too slow wouldn't be an issue with RAM previews, since the frames are all cached in RAM.
>

Issues with performance and RAM previews

Just did a major system upgrade from an iMac to a Mac Pro, and now I'm having an issue with performance...specifically with RAM previews.
When I try to do a RAM preview with audio, it grinds my entire OS to a hault (can't switch apps, or click on much of anything). It eventually clears up enough for me to stop the RAM preview.
So, I'm wondering if maybe my Memory & Multiprocessing settings might be off.
Here are my system specs:
Mac Pro
2 x 2.4GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12 cores)
64GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870
AE CS6 (11.0.2.11)
AE is installed on an SSD drive and the scratch disk is an internal HDD.
Here are my AE Memory Settings:
Here's my GPU Info:
Let me know if any other info is needed...

You are reserving far too little RAM for other software.
See this: "Performance tip: Don't starve your software of RAM."
(Also, I recommend going through all of these materials: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/543440 )
Regarding the SSD: Putting your application files on it means that applications load/boot faster. This is fine, but that benefit is just when you first start the application. If you put your cache files on it, then you get the benefit every time that something is read from or written to the cache---i.e., many times per second, for the entire time that you're working. Put your cache files on your SSD. BTW, there's no reason to not put your application files and caches on the same SSD. The reason that you split things across multiple disks is to prevent simultaneous reads and writes to and from a slow disk; the program loading from disk happens at a different time than reading and writing cache files, so there is no potential for conflict and slowdown.

RAM preview audio will not play through bluetooth headphones

I am using bluetooth headphones (Jaybird Freedom Sprint) to try and edit audio/video in after effects. However, when I go to Preferences>Audio Output Mapping and choose "Freedom Sprint" and click OK, close the preference window, and it will automatically go back to the default "Built in Output" when I open it back up. It will only play the sound through the Mac Pro tower I am using. Is there a way to get the headphone option output to stay permanently?? Is there a reason why it is not staying selected? Another thing I forgot to mention is that all other sounds work (like iTunes, volume up/down) through the headphones except for the audio RAM preview in After Effects. How can I disable the audio from playing through the tower? Very frustrating!
BTW - the only time headphones actually work is when they are plugged into the tower. These ones obviously can't be plugged in.
Thanks! (Screenshots provided for help)

Thanks! I definitely did try that first... (trying to find a solution with the headphones). You can't find any info about them online/their website. Regardless though, After Effects will not allow me to play the audio output through any other device except for the Mac Pro tower - even playing it through the LCD Cinema Display won't work.
Thanks for your reply

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.

I have no audio when I ram preview or after rendering in CS5.5

I have read all the solutions in other threads but with no avail, I'm still stuck with no audio. I had no problem like this before in CS3 and I'm currently using/learning CS5.5. I've had no audio at all. However, I can hear audio when I click on the layer that has my mp3 file on their by pressing 0 on the number keypad. But when I go on my main comp I can't hear any audio whatsoever when I press the space bar or when I press the RAM preview button. There is no audio even after I render it and yes, I did click on the audio check box in the audio module that has the lossless link to make sure it is on.

The flaw is here:
my mp3 file
Convert it to a WAV or AIFF. Nobody knows what can hapopen with MP3 and AE sucks at using those files even today.
Mylenium

After effects cc RAM preview problem

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

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

Multiprocessing works for RAM preview, extremely slow and aeselflink crashes when in Render Queue

Hello all,
System specs:
Hackintosh
OSX 10.9
3.5Ghz (overclocked to 4.2Ghz) Core i7
Geforce GTX 580 classified 3GB Cuda GPU
AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB Display GPU
32 GB of RAM
System SSD
5 drive internal RAID
After Effects CC 12.2.1.5
Cuda drivers up to date
I'm having a problem with the render queue and multiprocessing. I have a moderate sequence with several effects and 3D layers. When I'm working in the composition, everything goes great. I can RAM preview and all my CPU cores will kick up to 100% and render the composition in no time all; with full resolution with no skipped frames. It works fantastically.
Then when I go to render the exact same composition with the same multiprocessing settings, AE will hang at the "initializing background processes" for at least 5-10 minutes, during which the CPU will ramp up to 100% but no frames will be rendered. AE still remains responsive, as I can hit the stop or pause buttons and the queue will be cancled. But then the aeselflink processes (up to 8 of them depending on my settings, I've tried several) will still continue at 100% cpu load even with AE not set to render anything. I will have to go into the activity monitor and force quit each process. If I leave it for 5-10 minutes, it will finally stop initalizing and start the render, but the CPU will still run at 100% but the frames will crawl slowly forward at about 1 frame per minute, with an estimated 28 hours to render frames that were rendering in under a minute during RAM preview.
I have tried both reducing the number of cores AE will use, adjusting the allocated RAM, and disabling multiprocessing alltogether. When I disable multiprocessing, the render slows to a complete crawl, and it will render around 1 frame every 5-10 seconds. Again, this is on a composition that rendered in less than a minute on full resolution with RAM preview.
The only way to get this composition to render is to export it to Media Encoder, which will render it (without multicore processing, unfortunately) in about 8 minutes, still not the blazing fast RAM preview but at least it finishes it in under 3.5 hours (the amount of time that the multiprocessing disabled render in AE will take).
Here's the multiprocessing settings that have been very stable and carried me through other projects. Disk Cache is not enabled. The only other thing that is disabled is the "Disable Layer Cache" under the Secret menu as the plugins I'm using (Plexus 2 in this case) doesn't like to update when the camera moves so this option has been disabled to force it to reset each frame.
Does anyone know what is going on?
Also, please don't tell me that I should not use multiprocessing or instruct me on basic steps as to increase preformance on my machine. I have been tweaking my memory and multiprocessing settings for a long time now, and it is completely stable in everything but this setup. So please no answers saying "just don't use multiprocessing". It was made for a reason, it's effective, and it's needed. And please don't say that it's the hackintosh, either, as it's the most stable and powerful computer I've ever used. Sorry for the disclaimers, I just want to have constructive help.
Thank you in advance for your ideas!

Hi Rick, not sure if you saw the part where I said please don't reply with turning off Multiprocessing, and I did not say that it works and is effective in all areas. However, if you actally take the time to read my post, you will definately notice that RAM preview with multiprocessing takes under a minute to render a scene. Multiprocessing disabled and rendered in AE takes 3.5 hours. In Media Encoder it takes around 8 minutes. Clearly it IS working and IS effective for my case and my rig. Any vendettas against MP does not help my situation at all.

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.

There's got to be a better way to do this (RAM preview frustration)

I loaded a 1:20 second Full HD clip into after effects. I need to edit the video based on certain sounds in the video and see if I'm matching them up correctly by previewing it with sound.
The problem is i'm getting frustrated due to After effects not behaving like Premiere. First who thought it was a good idea not to incorporate sound into after effects? Second, I have an i7 sandy bridge processor, and 16 gbs of ram, yet it still takes time to render the ram preview (with no effects on it yet).
So ram preview is my only option for sound, but the problem is every time I hit ram preview it starts the video all the way from the beginning. This is frustrating as I want to start at a specific point. Imagine having a longer video where the editing needs to take place at the end.
There are people out there doing a lot more complicated professional projects, what do you guys do to get around this?
Why can't after effects do some basic things like premiere like render fast with sound? Is it due to Mercury engine and 64 bits?
This is one of the best products on the market, surely there is a better way to do this right?

but the problem is every time I hit ram preview it starts the video all the way from the beginning.
Window --> Preview, enable the "From current time" option
yet it still takes time to render the ram preview (with no effects on it yet).
There is no magic button. If it is compressed, naturally it needs to be decompressed and decoded first. This can consume resources even on fast machines. Furthermore, drive speed matters a lot in such cases. This might actualyl multiply, if you use multiprocessing, so for this kind of simple setup it's usually better to not use it. If your harddrives are fragmented or simply generally slow, frames cannot be loaded as fast and neither will AE be able to use the disk cache. Ergo, convert the footage and move it to the fastest drive in your system.
what do you guys do to get around this?
We preview at reduced compo resolution to extend RAM previews and place markers while the RAM preview plays using the * key on the numpad.
Mylenium

RAM Preview Optimization

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