Any tips to improve my AE performance

[Steve Roberts]

Extra RAM doesn’t really speed things up, it just makes renders with larger sources possible. Get more RAM, at least 2GB so you can have AE and another app open.

On the other hand, with only 512 MB, you just might be swapping to hard drive at some point? Ugh. Get more RAM.

AE’s performance is mostly based on processor speed, since it is the processor that renders the frames. If you have OpenGL on, then the graphics card might help redraws, but only under certain conditions, since OpenGL doesn’t support all of AE’s functions. Check the Help.

So … in my experience, I’d advise you to get more RAM no matter what, but for speed, a faster processor would have the most impact. And defrag the drives, since AE also has to access footage from disk on occasion.

Anybody else?

[Steve Freebairn]

I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but the system you are using is kind of slow to “expect” real-time performance, and another thing that you might not want to hear is that I tried AE 7.0 last night and it was playing things real time that it couln’t even play 1/3 real time before. AE 7.0 is really something else. You want to make sure that you’re graphics card is on their list of solutions though.

Basically, when I work on machines that aren’t as speed I lower the resolution of the preview until I need to see the full quality thing. At first I was surprised when I started working with After Effects, because it wasn’t real time, but when you look at what it can do, it makes sense.

[Danny Princz]

well not the fastest system these days, there is no reason why you shouldnt be able to get realtime ram previews.

AE could was doing ram previews way before there was even a 2.4ghz machine

[Rhett Robinson]

Greetings!
As someone that has spent many, many hours putting together projects on an iBook 500 (I render using the render engine on an even slower Mac when I do projects on the Mac – a 233 machine that just ticks away for a few days), with lights, shadows, and the whole 9 yards. I guess it depends on how “excellent” your preview has to be. I have a custom setting I use (instead of 1/4, I tell it to use 1/8), leave all the layers set to draft, and use the shift-ram preview regularly to check animation speeds, and usually don’t turn on shadows, etc. until the last moment, and even then, I turn on the caps lock, and usually “spot check” specific areas in full res. If I want a “great” RAM preview, I hit the 0 key, and do something else for a while.

That said (for the lower end way to achieve workability), more RAM won’t hurt, for sure, because your OS is using up most of that. Frequently the problem with a PC however, is the other running processes, or often spyware on the machine. I’d make sure that it’s clean, then disk defrag, and consider making sure that a lot of background apps aren’t always running (usually, but not always visible on the lower right in the menu bar). These are all taking a small bit of CPU and memory.
Good luck!
Rhett

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Thanks hugely for the tips. The advice on reducing the resolutions is especially helpful. Its not being able to see the effects of my changes in realtime or even half, that affects my ability to work. If I can speed up the playback in low res I will still have a better appreciation of what I am doing so that will help heaps.

Cheers.

[Ericsantiago]

Ive tested AE 6.5 (7.0 on OSX) on these:
Boxx S5s Dual Xeon 3Ghz with 4GB RAM
Dell 360 Dual Core 3.7Ghz with 4GB RAM
Apple G5 Dual 2.7Ghz with 4GB RAM

They all crap out at at the same time as far as RAM Preview goes 🙁
Using the same project with a total Comp length of 4:10sec, they all die almost the same spot. I guess this has to do with RAM?
I know we top out at 2Gbs for Adobe stuff 🙁

My question is, is there talks of getting more out of 64bit systems?
I thought fer sure with my G5 OSX plus AE7 that this would be higher in RAM Preview 😛