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Memory and Multiproccesing
I have a 8 Core Mac Pro with 10 gb of ram, and I wanted to know what configuration I should use to get the best out of AE?
Here’s a screenshot of what I just switched it to
Thanks,
Zevie -
8 Replies
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The golden rule is that you need at least 2GB per core. 3 GB per core for HD sized comps, large source files or 16/32 bpc processing.
So with 10 GB of RAM, you could use 4 cores by setting “CPUs to leave for other applications” to 4.
If you don’t do this, the rendering instances will starve from lack of RAM.Leave everything else at default values, or you can keep “RAM to leave for other applications” at 1-2 GB, so you can keep doing simple tasks while AE renders.
If you want to use more/all cores for rendering in AE, getting more RAM is a good idea.
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Thanks, and would you recommend putting the slider on faster rendering?
Another question I have, is AE CS4 32 bit, (for mac) and if so, what would be the difference if it was 64 bit?
Thanks for the help,
Zevie -
I would leave it at the default. It’s a good compromise.
After Effects CS4 is a 32 bit app that works better on 64-bit operating systems (because it can use a network of 32-bit background applications to render using multiple processors/cores and thus access more RAM than 32-bit applications can normally use).The main advantage to a 64-bit application is breaking free from the 4GB limit for RAM usage for application (in some operating systems, like Windows Xp 32, the limit is much worse than this). So, if you had a ton of RAM, performance would improve when using very, very large source files and performing other memory intensive operations. Also, for example, RAM previews could take advantage of more RAM if you had it.
Note that currently AE CS4 can take advantage of ALL your 10 GBs (and it will happily take more) by using separate processes for rendering frames across multiple cores/processors.
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Thanks for all your time and for making great products!
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Hey Adolfo, I’ve also been struggling to feel like I’m maxing out my systems performance and hope you could dbl check my settings. I have a dual quad core mac pro, which is reading as 16 cores because of hyper threading. I’ve got 16Gb of ram installed and using your notes above, this is where I’ve got it set:
I can ram preview a little over 8 seconds of a 720p timeline with no effects, just stills. Does this seem right to you?
I’ve also got a concern with disk cache. I almost never see the blue bar in my timelines, and when I do it is only a few frames. This is my disk cache configuration:
Either I’m misunderstanding how it works, or…something. That scratch drive is a 2.5TB 3 disc raid 0 array so I would think the 40GB allocated would not be a problem.
Thanks in advanced for your time.
-mmoser
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[Mark Moser] “I can ram preview a little over 8 seconds of a 720p timeline with no effects, just stills. Does this seem right to you?”
For RAM previews, the nature of the content doesn’t affect the time span you get. In other words, 8 seconds of uncompressed 720 video take a certain amount of memory, besides what kind of material you use or which operations you perform.
8 secs would be reasonable with these settings. You will get more than that, if you move the Longer RAM previews/Faster rendering slider a bit towards “Longer RAM previews”. Nothing drastic.[Mark Moser] “I’ve also got a concern with disk cache. I almost never see the blue bar in my timelines, and when I do it is only a few frames. This is my disk cache configuration:”
AE only caches to disk when it thinks that doing so will be faster than not doing it. So, don’t worry about it. Other than that, disk caching plays more of a role Spacebar play, not when building RAM previews.
Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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Thanks for the info.
RAM preview only being a stream of “final output” make sense, not sure why I thought otherwise. Then is it possible to specify a compression for ram previews, like say prores or jpeg? Just curious if it is possible to get longer ram previews, more like 30 seconds. I know I could always render out the timeline, and probably should, but I want my slice of cake 😉 Maybe I should look more into proxies?
re:disk cache
…see, I *was* misunderstanding what this was. I assumed this was a way to increase the ram preview duration. Now I feel like my 40Gb scratch disk is overkill and silly.Thanks again!
-mmoser
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RAM preview are in the uncompressed 4:4:4 RGB space AE always uses for internal processing.
You are not entirely wrong about disk caching. But AE only uses when it really offers a performance advantage compared to re-creating the RAM preview segment on the fly.Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
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