No HD realtime RAM preview

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Radek,

Which DeckLink drivers are you using? We’ll check it out on our systems and get back to you. RAM Preview out of After Effects is far more demanding than output from Premiere Pro and that might be the explanation for your problems but we will check it out here and let you know.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Radek]

I’m using 5.1.2 drivers.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

We tested this out on both Mac and Windows and found very similar results to your observations.

I asked the engineers about this and was told:

1. RAM preview from After Effects is RGB which uses about twice the data of YUV output from an application such as Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro.

2. The RAM preview in After Effects is creating the frames and then displaying them whereas applications such as Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro are simply displaying frames which have already been created.

For both reasons, RAM preview of HD material in After Effects is not real time compared to SD material which is usually real time after it has been played once.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Radek]

What does it mean for me? Can I – any way – get realtime preview in HD from AfterFX? Now or in a futere? Can I help myself changing hardware config or dealing with the system setup, registry? Will you update your drivers in future?

The most wierd thing is that i made some test with my standard definition worstation and DIDM’T notice any problems…
Testing procedure was:
generate no animated pattern with 4 gradient point (AE RENDER) and put timecode over it. Rendering RAM Preview and… everything goes incredibly smooth, in 1920×1080 25FPS! Only diference is that i used rendered AFX animation NOT footage captured via Decklink.

SYSTEM
Pentium 4 3,06 (533MHZ)
2 GB RAM ECC
ASUS motherboard P4G8x (single CPU)
GForce Ti4200 (dual head 2×19′ CRT)
RAID 5
Promise supertrack sx6000
Windows XP PRO
Decklink PRO
After FX 6.5