Open gl in After Effects

[Kevin Camp]

you won’t have any problems running ae without an ae-opengl certified card.

opengl in ae is really just intended to help speed up previews for interactions. it’s not used for rendering, so you should find any limitations… as you’ve probably read, many users (myself included) just disable opengl for previews all together due to other issues it can create.

a separate graphics card (if it has pci slots) may give you some benefit though… i believe the integrated intel gpu shares ram with the cpu, so some of your ram will probably be lost to the gpu (probably only 256mb, maybe up to 512mb).

more ram would be nice, but you can operate with 4gb, just don’t enable multiprocessing. if you do want to get more ram, make sure you also have a 64-bit operating system, or the system will not use more than 4gb.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Joey Burnham]

Also 8 gigs of RAM isn’t enough really for mutiprocessing anyway. It’s fine for working though. At least that’s our case here. Takes longer to fire up those cores than the initial render would take anyway.
Joey

[Thomas Bradley]

Thankyou all for your response,

Unfortunately I cant go higher than 8 gig but I will be using 8 gig shortly.

I am glad to hear that not using Open GL will not effect my work-flow.

Yes I do have multiprocessing disabled, in fact it wont enable any way with just 4 gig on 4 cores, I read on the After Effects help pages that each core requires 2 gig of ram before it will enable.

I will experiment when I goto 8 gig with multi processing but I do take on board the comment that it should be left off.

I am looking into whether or not I can add a card so that it frees up my system ram.

I do feel more at ease now so thanks,

Lastly I would add that after studying this problem for nearly a week and posting on lots of forums this is the best response so far!

Thanks again.

Tom.

PS: Is there a way to get AE to use more than the 2.2 gig out of 4 that it is using? I am not bale to increase it in preferences and i know my background services can run on a gig so would like to increase to 3 if possible before I go up to 8 gig in a few weeks.

Tom.

[Todd Kopriva]

> I read on the After Effects help pages that each core requires 2 gig of ram before it will enable.

That’s not what the Help pages say. They _recommend_ starting with 2GB per core.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————

[Thomas Bradley]

is that not what I said?

if you are referring to the “starting with” part yes I agree that is what it says.

I have 2 cores but 4 threads so AE does read it as 4 cores and as i have now only 4 gig of ram it will not use multi processing, so as I said I can go up to 8 gig in my computer and when I do each core will have the minimum amount which is 2 gig per core, or in the help pages words “starting with” amount, which is the same as minimum as I have explained it will not work with less than that.

Thankyou.

[Thomas Bradley]

OK after reading the links you gave me on the other similar topic I understand it better now.
I am wrong,
Todd you are completely right that it was it says.

So am I right in thinking of it like this:

I have 4 gig of ram installed at the moment.
I have 4 cores ( 2 physical and to virtual) After Effects reads it as 4 and list 4 in preferences.

After Effects leaves at least 1.5 gig of ram for other applications and this amount cant go lower (well not using settings in preferences from my experience)

The minimum setting in after effects preferences for multi processing is .75gig ram per process.
4 cores so 4x.75=3 gig which is more than AE has left after it allows 1.5 minimum to other apps. So multi process wont work.
Is that right?

My old computer had just 2 cores and 4 gig of ram and I could get multi processing to work only if I set background process ram allocation to .75 gig of ram )maybe as high as 1 gig) as I did not have enough to go higher.

Now i have same amount of ram but 4 cores I can not get it to work, I get the option to turn it on but I can not get it to set an amount of cores that will be used, it stays on 0 no matter how I tweak then settings.

Maybe there is a way to allow AE to use more ram than the system allows but I do not know, would be nice to find out.

I know my system could run on a gig of ram so I could have 3 for AE and then 4 cores and .75 could get multi processing to work perhaps.

I apologize again for my Mistake Todd.

Tom

[Todd Kopriva]

So am I right in thinking of it like this:

I have 4 gig of ram installed at the moment.
I have 4 cores ( 2 physical and to virtual) After Effects reads it as 4 and list 4 in preferences.

After Effects leaves at least 1.5 gig of ram for other applications and this amount cant go lower (well not using settings in preferences from my experience)

The minimum setting in after effects preferences for multi processing is .75gig ram per process.
4 cores so 4x.75=3 gig which is more than AE has left after it allows 1.5 minimum to other apps. So multi process wont work.
Is that right?

4GB – 1.5GB for other software leaves 2.5GB for After Effects.

If you have the background processes set to use 0.75GB, then the foreground process first takes 1.2x that, which is 0.9GB.

That leaves 1.6GB, which is enough for 2 background processes, so Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing can work. Minimally, but it’ll work.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————

[Thomas Bradley]

right,
so mine is not working,
AE is telling me that I have 3.8 GB of ram, even though I have 4 gigs,
so could this be why?

that takes your calculation down to 1.4 sop enough for 1 process yes?

so why am I not being allowed to use it?

Like I said I get the option to turn it on and change settings but no matter what settings I use I can not get it to change from 0, 0 being the number that relates to cores that will be used.

Ive just tried CS3 and that as you now does not let you change settings but works things out for its self, and in there it IS saying that 1 additional processor will be used which make sense from he calculations above.

How ever CS5 is not saying any additional cores/processors will be used.

Tom

PS: thanks for taking time to help me on this. If needed I can add some screen shots if allowed.

[Thomas Bradley]

sorry for the double post but I think this might help.

When I run AE CS5 I have only one instant of After FX.exe in task manger,
so I am presuming that multi processing is not working, also it says as much in p[references.
How ever when I run AE CS3 I have3 instances of After FX.exe in task manager which would lead me to think there are 2 additional cores working even though preferences are saying 1 additional cpu being used.

dont know if this helps make sense of what is happening in cs5/3 with me?

T

[Todd Kopriva]

After Effects CS3 would fire up the background processes with as little as 0.5GB available per background process.

If you only have 3.8GB of RAM, then you really shouldn’t be trying to use Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing at all.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
———————————————————————————————————