After Effects CS3 on the PC FREEZING!

[Les Nemeth]

There are some good trouble shooting tips on this site:

https://generalspecialist.com/2006/11/avoiding-after-effects-error-could-not.asp

https://generalspecialist.com/2007/02/troubleshooting-after-effects-7.asp
(especially under the heading “Workaround to common problems”)

[Kevin Camp]

another thing you can try that won’t be listed on the general specialist site (since it’s a new feature in cs3-4) is disable ‘render mulitple frames simultaneously’ in the multiprocessing prefs, if enabled.

with hd comps and only 3gb of ram, mp would probably hurt you more than help you with rendering…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Les Nemeth]

I’ve read a few times that suggestion, to disable the “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” feature.

I remember long time ago I’ve also read about that “Secret” preferences, but completely forgot about it. So yesterday when I found it again, it helped me with my pain I used to experience.

In the “Secret” setting (holding Shift while bringing up Preferences), setting the “Purge Every X frames during movie making” to a low number it really helps. And that allows me to set the render multiple frames simultaneously checked even at 4G (3G technically on 32bit OS).

Example.

If you render HD (1900×1080) your buffer for 1 frame would be:
1900 x 1080 x 3 (3 is for red + green + blue) * 8 (8 bits = 1 byte) = about 48M for a frame (hope I’m correct :-).

So if you set the “Purge Every X frames during movie making” to 1, it will purge the buffer after every frame, and the buffer only will be 48M.

Yesterday, I tried this, set the Purge Every frame… to 15, set my RAM cache to 15% (!!!) and rendered multiple frames at 720×480 a 4 minute sequence, on 4G (using only 3G on 32bit).

It went through that sequence like knife through butter without any issues! Mmmmmm goodie! (The reason I set the RAM cache to 15% is because that was the setting which enabled all cores for rendering. You can see that in the prefs dialog under “Multiprocessing”.)

I did different experiments with this, and of course clearing the frame buffer does have some overhead. When I specify to clear every 4 frames (1 per core – so I thought), the sequence rendered in 9’15”. When I set it to clear at every 15 frames, it rendered exactly 9′ – saving 15 seconds.

So, all in all, definitely interesting.

[Kevin Camp]

[les nemeth] “f you render HD (1900×1080) your buffer for 1 frame would be:
1900 x 1080 x 3 (3 is for red + green + blue) * 8 (8 bits = 1 byte) = about 48M for a frame (hope I’m correct :-).”

i believe a 1080 hd frame is a little over 6mb (1920x1080x3). like an sd image is 720x486x3 = 1mb. but you would think that color bit depth would figure in there some place…

you’ve found an interesting way to limit the ram cache. have you compared the purge frame method to setting the ram cache to 15%…? or, to disabling mp but not using the secret preference to purge frames?

i’m just curious.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Les Nemeth]

I think you’re right Kev, I might’ve put an extra “8” in the multiplication up there. In that case, it’s even better. Less memory usage!

>>”have you compared the purge frame method to setting the ram cache to 15%…? or, to disabling mp but not using the secret preference to purge frames?”
If I have MP enabled, there’s no way I can set the RAM cache that low because running on 3G, AE will definitely crash or hang. I guess it will just not clear the cache itself (or at least not efficiently) unless it’s being set in the “Secret” place.

If I disable MP, the only drawback to that is I will have 3 cores just idling and rendering will take unnecessarily long. Which is better then crashing, of course.

Of course, it won’t exactly be 15%. It all depends on how much RAM you have and whether it’s 15% or 17% or even maybe 10% will depending on how many background services will clutter the system – which take up a few extra megs.

All in all, if an HD frame takes up about 6M, and I clear the cache, say, after each 20 frames, that would need about 120M or RAM. So this would allow you to set your RAM cache pretty low, and enable all cores at the same time for fast rendering even on a 3G machine.

[Kevin Camp]

[les nemeth] “If I disable MP, the only drawback to that is I will have 3 cores just idling”

not necessarily… i’ve found that when i’ve had to turn ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’ off, or have used effects that would not use ‘rmfs’ or had to use file>export (which does not use ‘rmfs’) i usually see a cpu usage over 100% for the ae foreground process (often around 250-300%). so multiple cores are usually at work even with the ‘rmfs’ setting enabled.

many effects will use multiple cores regardless of the ‘rmfs’ setting. for instance, i know when using keylight, there is very little difference in processing time with ‘rmfs’ enabled, since keylight is already a multithreaded effect… of course if you are also using other effects that aren’t you’ll see different results.

however, despite any of that, i always keep ‘rmfs’ enabled unless i’m having a problem… which really isn’t very often 🙂

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW