how do I get After effects6.5 to utilze the most ram…

[Steve Covello]

If you are working on a Mac on OS X, then you have nothing to worry about. OS X utilizes “dynamic RAM”, which unlike OS 9, uses as much as it needs based on what is available. OS 9 required “assigning” a RAM amount which it was limited to. This means that it will use more if more is available if you close out unused applications. But it doesn’t guarantee that it will use every single ounce of RAM if 1.5 gb is available.

If you go into Activity Monitor [Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor], you can see a running account of your RAM usage throughout your machine while you are rendering.

The speed of your computer’s performance will certainly improve with more RAM, but the processor speed will ultimately limit the highest level you can get.

steve covello
doubel wide post

[Jincooyea]

Hi,

thanks for your response,

when I set up my render que It only says AE is using 60% of 2.5 gig of ram….

how do I increase this, becuse I now have 4.5 gig installed..

thanks again

[Steve Roberts]

Until AE gets reprogrammed to use 64-bit Operating Systems, and you’re running a 64-bit OS as well, AE can not use more than 2 GB of RAM. It’s a 32-bit OS thing, apparently.

It’s my understanding that AE only uses as much RAM as it has to, and using more RAM won’t speed up your workflow — it will only allow you longer RAM previews prevent renders from crashing, and probably avoid disk caching when you fill up your RAM(though I’ve never seen that).

If you can RAM preview all the frames you want, and your renders aren’t crashing for lack of RAM, then you have all the RAM you can use, in my opinion. Until AE gets 64-bit aware, that is. Have you found that AE won’t let you RAM preview your entire work area, but still shows that it is using 60% of your RAM?

Steve