Disk Cache WTF

[Dominik Bochenski]

So does anyone know of any tricks to max out the RAM preview? I’m working in 2k so even with loads of ram I can only playback 5 seconds worth.

[Darby Edelen]

[Dave LaRonde] “As I understand it, AE uses disk chaching to render items that are unlikely to change in a comp”

My understanding of Disk Caching is that it only occurs when the RAM Cache is full and AE thinks it will be faster to retrieve the frame from disk than it would be to render it. However, that said I’m pretty sure that during a RAM preview AE will only work with frames that are loaded into RAM, so you are benefitting from the Disk Cache in that AE does not need to re-render the frames cached on disk, but it still needs to copy those frames from Disk into RAM for a RAM Preview.

From Adobe’s help documentation:

“The disk cache is not used for RAM previews.”

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/WS155A1BB2-BB32-4833-A079-F8396553D7B0.html

and…

“Enable Disk Cache Moves rendered frames to your hard disk when the RAM cache is full. After Effects will only use the disk cache to store a frame if it’s faster to retrieve a frame from the cache than to re-render the frame. Select a folder to contain your cache, and click OK (Windows) or Choose (Mac OS). For the best performance, select a folder that’s on a different physical hard disk than your source footage. If possible, the folder should be on a hard disk that uses a different drive controller than the disk that contains your source footage. The disk cache folder can’t be the hard disk’s root folder.”

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/WS0CDB46BA-BA44-4d0b-91EC-6CB52E1395FB.html

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA