OK back to day one stuff

[Steve Morris]

Are you referring to a RAM preview? Or, are you saying it plays slow when you just play it right in timeline. It won’t play at normal speed without a ram preview, unless you have a top-notch computer.

[Erik Pontius]

Are you just playing the timeline (space bar) or are you doing a RAM preview (num pad zero key)?
Just playing the timeline will choke (not playing in real time) as soon as AE has to do any real work and render anything. Doing a RAM preview will get AE to render all the effects and as much of your work area into memory in order to playback that area in real time.

Erik

[Oldnoob]

Well, I do the RAM preview, but it only renders the first 25 seconds and then loops back to the begining, and when I do a time line view I get hung up after the 25 second point. I’m not sure if it’s a setting, because I didn’t have this problem in AE 6.5

[Oldnoob]

I having a problem getting past the 25 second mark in the RAM preview, it hits the 25 second mark and then loops back to the begining of the comp. when that happens and I play the timeline, it hangs up after the 25 second mark. I’m using a Dual Core 2.3 ghz, 2 gig ram.

[Steve Morris]

That is correct. Everything is acting as it should. The ram preview is based on the amount of ram you have. AE is not an NLE.

Change to “1/4” quality rather than “full”, you will get a longer preview.

[Oldnoob]

Thanks for the reply, this was my first try at footage longer than 600 frames, the project has 1697 frames but was only rendering 750 frames clean, i guess the solution would be to edit clips shorter than 750 frames if i want a steady playback.

Thanks Again

[Steve Morris]

Don’t forget to hit SHIFT + 0 (zero) for the ram preview. It will skip every other frame. You will get twice the amount of time for the preview.

[Erik Pontius]

Back to an earlier comment by another poster… AE is not an NLE. That being said, there is no technical reason why you can’t work with longer pieces of video. The RAM preview will preview your work area which is the bar directly above the timeline, you can set the beginning of the work area by placing the current time indicator to your desired spot and hitting “B” and then move your CTI to the spot where you want the end of your work area and hit “N”. Performing a RAM preview will process and load as much of this work area as possible into memory and play it back at real time. Once you’ve previewed that section you can move the work area down and then ram preview another section. Changing the “magnification” setting of your comp preview window (say 50%), setting a lower resolution (say half), and or changing the preview playback frame rate (15) can help you fit more frames into RAM…
Also for some complicated comps where you have parts that are final and are not going to change, the can be pre-rendered so that AE doesn’t have to spend time processing the effects for those areas.
Check out the COW’s AE tutorials, there are a couple of tutorials on workflow tips, pre-comps, proxies, and such that could help you out.

Erik

[Arthur Vibert]

The length of your preview is limited by the amount of RAM you have. You have a number of choices if you want to see what’s going on. You can do as was suggested and render at a lower resolution. You can render only a part of the timeline by making your work area shorter than the entire timeline – position the playhead appropriately and press “b” for the beginning of the work area and “n” for the end of the work area. Then when you press “0” you will render only the work area. Finally, you can also just do a test and render out a movie and view that. Of course, that will take awhile : )

Good luck.

Arthur Vibert