RAM Preview

[Steve Roberts]

You need more RAM. AE stores image frames in RAM for a RAM preview. If you find you need more frames at a given resolution, you need more RAM.

Use Task Manager (Windows) to determine how much RAM is being used up when AE isn’t open. Add 2GB to that figure to max out your RAM for AE alone. Feel free to buy more RAM to handle other apps and unexpected overhead.

(Why 2 GB? AE can only use up to 2GB of RAM until everybody gets online with 64-bit Operating Systems, including Adobe.)

Let’s say your overhead is 250 MB of RAM, then your 30-second RAM preview uses 750 MB, then you’re full. If you then add 1 GB of RAM, maybe you’ll get another 40 seconds out of your preview.

But there’s no way to RAM preview 4 minutes at full res. Such is not the nature of compositing, at least on the desktop. There just isn’t enough RAM to store the images. If the program is too long, you have to view less of it at full res, or more of it at lower res.

If your show only has a few effects shots, you RAM preview the shots until they’re good enough, render them, then drop them into the show in an editing app. If you want, then view them in the context of a larger part of the show in the editing app, then go back to AE. In other words, do a shot at a time. Watching the entire show full-res in RAM preview is a luxury.

Besides, even if you could do that, you’d probably do it once or twice, then get tired of waiting for the loooong preview to build, so you’d just preview each change and move on to the next. At least I would. 🙂

Bottom line: RAM preview is limited to the amount of RAM in your machine, up to 2 GB for AE. Get more RAM and/or preview at a lower res & magnification (match them: halfres=50%mag)

Hope that helps,
Steve