RAM Preview and Render Issues

[James Carver]

Does that plugin use the RAM from the cpu or rely moreso on the graphics card? Do you know?

iMac 27\” Late 2013
32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
3.5 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

[Ryan Smith]

I do not know that. But I have been playing around and I found out Trapcode Particular is the reason why it is rendering so slow. Is there anyway I can fix that?

Moo! Im a cow!

[Ryan Smith]

I am running CS6

Moo! Im a cow!

[Walter Soyka]

[Ryan Smith] “At first I thought it could be my specs of the computer or the settings I have. But when I changed the memory and multiprocessing settings to use my computers resources since I noticed AE peaked at using 30% of CPU and 20% of RAM.”

Often, allowing the individual instances of Ae to use more RAM, even though this means fewer background render instances, will give you better performance. Leave at least 25% of your RAM available for other applications. Let Ae use 4 or maybe even 6 GB of RAM per background per core.

Or…

[Ryan Smith] “I have more of an issue previewing my work because it takes forever to load and it makes it difficult to see what I am making because I have to wait a while.”

Using multiprocessing for previews can be frustrating, because it takes so long to start a preview. Especially if you are previewing short sections, you might be better off disabling multiprocessing while you are previewing to get faster starts, then just enabling it for final render (when the total render time is long enough to make up for the “overhead” of starting the multiprocessing).

Later versions of Ae actually make this a multiprocessing preference (“Only for Render Queue, not for RAM Preview”).

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Ryan Smith]

If I got the latest AE, could it help speed up previews and renders? If so, would it be better to get 2014 or 2015 CC? I have had CS6 for a while so I would not mind getting a newer version.

EDIT: I have cannot seem to find a 2014 version.

[James Carver]

Well I have been having a lot of issues lately with 2015 and RAM despite having 32GB available. Seems to started pretty frequently as soon as I installed the latest trapcode and red giant products a couple weeks ago now that you mention it. I’m in a project where I need certain plugins they offer though. 2016 version releases supposedly in June from what I read. Maybe try 2015 until then.

iMac 27\” Late 2013
32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
3.5 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

[Ryan Smith]

So I have CC 2015 now. The settings are different now. What would be the best settings for my PC?

Moo! Im a cow!

[Walter Soyka]

After Effects CC 2015 are the first releases of a major re-architecture effort. For the first time in its 20+ year history, the renderer has been separated from the GUI, so the interface remains responsive while rendering, and so that rendering is not blocked by UI manipulations. The goal is ultimately to make Ae significantly faster on modern hardware, but it’s a lot of work and they’re not entirely there yet.

On the one hand, the entirely re-written preview engine in Ae CC 2015 is a big improvement over previous releases. On the other hand, Ae CC 2015 is still a bit of a work in progress. Multiprocessing is not currently implemented in Ae CC 2015, and depending on the nature of your project, that can impact render and preview times.

I am using Ae CC 2015 (13.5+) for my daily work in order to take advantage of the new and improved preview system, but I’m still using Ae CC 2014 (13.2) for renders in order to take advantage of multiprocessing. Ae only changes the project file format on major version numbers, so any 13.x version of Ae can read and write the AEPs, and it’s no problem at all to bounce back and forth between 13.2 and 13.7 all day long.

As a CC subscriber, you are of course eligible to download and install Ae CC 2014 (13.2) alongside your current CC 2015 installation. They both work together fine. See these instructions:
https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/download-install-app.html#topic-3

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Ryan Smith]

Thanks for the info! I have tried both 2015 and 2014 versions of AE. I do notice a slight improvement in speed of the program compared to CS6 but not on the previews. I have seen videos of people showing off how to have 2000 audio bands for a solid looking audio spectrum and use Trapcode Particular at the same time and it previews perfectly. They show their PC specs which are lower than mine. Yet mine previews so poorly. Is there any settings that I have to set for good performances or maybe I have settings I set wrong?

Moo! Im a cow!

[Walter Soyka]

There are many things that can affect preview/render time. Lights, shadows, motion blur, depth of field, frame blending, raytracing, effects… unless you have the same settings for everything, it’s hard to compare different projects on different computers.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]