AE CS3 how do i get multi frame rendering to work

[Michael Duff]

hmmm .. we just installed AE8 on the same machine and multi-frame rendering works perfectly … just ticked the box in preferences and away it went … oh, but we haven’t got the 8.0.1 update … maybe it is buggy or something?

[Kevin Camp]

it would be good to know how much ram you have… for multiprocessing, 1gb per processing core is suggested, 2gb is recommended…. (4cores x 2gb ram = 8gb ram).

also what are your memory & cache settings..? is the crash during ram preview, or final render? and are you openning cs3 as native intel (default) or are you forcing it to open under rosetta (an option in the get info panel from the finder)? there is a problem with multiprocessing running cs3 in rosetta, adobe has a work around, if needed.

my suggestion would be to reset the memory & cache settings to the default. then enable multiprocessing (ae will say how many additional cores will be used, take note, but don’t make changes to the ram cache or disk cache yet if it sugests to). set opengl to interaction only, if it is enabled (for testing you may want to just disable opengl at this point).

see if that helps at all… if it does, then we can tweak settings based on what’s you’re seeing in the multiprocessing pref and the ram you have.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Michael Duff]

hi moldyboot … seems you know a lot about RAM and such so might ask you another question…
We get the old Image Buffer error a lot on big jobs… we thought it was that our machines needed rebuilding … so the other day we did this … so a number of G5s with slightly different configerations all with fresh installs … the problem is still the same … heres the thing, if we take out extra RAM and just have 2Gig or less we don’t get the error … any more and we do… we also just got a new macPro (4gig RAM), and were surprised that we get the same Image Buffer error still…

this happened in AE7 and now with a fresh install of AE8 …

all the memory cache settings are set on default on all the machines…

so… the 2.5Ghz G5 with 1.5Gig of RAM … no errors
… the brand new 2x 2.66Ghz dual core macPro with 4GB RAM … image buffer error

any thoughts?

[Kevin Camp]

i used to see a lot of image buffer errors with ae7 on a macpro (2x3ghz, 4gb ram), but since upgrading to cs3 i haven’t seen them too often… i did get one weeks ago that i hadn’t seen, saying something about due to possible fragmentation, and suggested increasing the disk cache (which actually worked).

it’s very interesting that removing ram helped… i wonder if restricting ram in the memory settings of the other systems to match what was available to the g5 with 1.5gb of ram would have any effect. checking at the adobe forum may be helpful… i may do a search there if i have time. i wouldn’t be surprised if there is technote regarding image buffer errors.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

hey duff,

i had tried to check adobe’s ae forum last week, but in upgrading their forum they had broken their search feature. but i looked into it some today, and it sounds like lowering the ram cache can allow for a larger image buffer…

i guess that makes sense, the ram cache holds frames for ae to composite, lowering that amount of ram then frees up more ram to allocate for the image buffer, which sound like the space required to render a single frame.

i hope that helps.

now, as to why a mac with less ram has less problems with image buffer errors… that just seems counter-intuitive.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW