Memory & Cache

[Walter Soyka]

Have you seen the documentation on these items?

RAM and Disk Caches

The Media Cache

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Nina Bjer]

Yes, and I’m still confused.

[Nina Bjer]

Yes, and I’m still confused, so if there is anyone who knows this and can help that would be very much appreciated! 🙂

[Todd Kopriva]

> In Conformed Media Cache there are two folders to choose:
Database: Do I need to specify this? It is set to C/User/Roaming/Adobe/Common.
Cache: Where should I put this? In C as it is or in or D?

Is there a reason that you think that you need to change this from its default location?

> Is this the captured files or the preview files?

preview files, as described in the “The media cache” page that Walter pointed you to:
“When After Effects imports video and audio in some formats, it processes and caches versions of these items that it can readily access when generating previews. Imported audio files are each conformed to a new .cfa file, and MPEG files are indexed to a new .mpgindex file. The media cache greatly improves performance for previews, because the video and audio items do not need to be reprocessed for each preview.”

> Image cache: I enable Disk Cache and choose a folder. Should it be harddrive C or D?

Is there some reason that you think that you need to change this from the default?

Here is some advice from the “RAM and disk cache” page that Walter pointed you to:
“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 root folder of the hard disk.”

>Is this Is this the captured files or the preview files?

from the “RAM and disk cache” page that Walter pointed you to:
“If disk caching is enabled, After Effects can store rendered items to your hard disk when the RAM cache is full during standard previews.”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Walter Soyka]

I’m not really sure what you mean by “capture” or “preview” files — After Effects doesn’t really have either one.

Can you describe a little bit about your setup and what you’re trying to accomplish?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Nina Bjer]

Thanks Todd! Okej, so the answer seems to be that I can keep the pre-chosen folders as they are in the Memory & Cache preferences. This is C.

The reason I asked which of these I should put on C or D was that the defolt is C on my computer and I understood that the source footage and the prewiew files should not be on the same hard drive. I have read all the help-sections already and aske here when I don’t understand them. And I thought it would be easier to just ask this rather than all the things I don’t understand in these texts. It’s like learning a new language. 🙂

[Nina Bjer]

Okej, thanks for trying to help! 🙂 Sorry I’m new to this. I just really thought that one should separate the files of a project into different hard drives for better performance and then I just wanted to know, if I should do this by choosing different hard drives in the Memory & Cache preferences. Here are three folders to be specified (under enable disk cache, database and cache). But from the post above it seems like these can all be as they are by defolt, C. So then I’m just more confused of where to separate the project to different hard drives…

[Walter Soyka]

[Nina Bjer] “So then I’m just more confused of where to separate the project to different hard drives… “

In my experience, most After Effects users run out of processing power and RAM before hard drive speed becomes an issue. What kind of system do you have?

That said, the general advice (if you don’t have a high-speed RAID) is one drive for the operating system and applications, a second drive for footage, and a third drive for renders.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Nina Bjer]

You’re very kind trying to help me! 🙂 Sorry for not getting it!

Yes exactly, its this general rule that makes me think that I should specify the three folders in the Memory & Cache Preferences? Im I really so wrong in this?

1) The first of these folders, with the preview render files, should be on the G-drive, no? If I have already put my captured video files on D?

2) The second folder (Database), I keep on C?

3) And the third folder (Cache), I keep on C?

When you say the application, does that include the project files?

[Ross Tokach]

The way I run, I first take my two raid 0 drives and put a partition on them, so I have two 300 GB drives and they are split at 150 x 2, then I raid 0 them together, it will never show you the partitions. It will show as a 600 gig strip. But the Boot segments have been partioned for the sake of the index. Then, I allocate 30 gigs of drive space to paging. Then I add in a 2 gig card on readyboost.

Now I am ready to start allocating save positions for my data. I go into my preferences and set up my cache next to my original source files on the raid 0 in its own folder, make sure the folder name is a higher alpha numeric name such as AA. So you have your footage and your Cache in the same folder, labeled AA.

Then I make a secondary folder with a name such as ZZ, this folder is made directly after I make my cache folder. The ZZ folder is going to be my scratch disk file. it is in this folder you will put all of your save files and renders from anything on the project.

Make sure you use a mirror of some sort to save all your progress, it will help you if you can use an external to mirror to, set up ready boost on it and it helps with your data write speeds to that drive and also helps relieve some of the systems backache.

I hope this isn’t too confusing, I hope I could help.

OOP, my render is done!