RAM usage when rendering

[Richie Tovell]

After effects can only see 4 gig of ram even with a 64 bit OS.

EDD: you can limit the Preview window resolution to half (this helps) you should be able to see a little tab at the bottom of your preview window that says FULL, within this tab there are some more options to downsample the resolution. Setting the playback size of this window to %50 and the downsample to %50 will allow you to preview more of your comp.

I have to say I was very dissapointed by this ram limitation as I have 8 gig, so am in kind of the same boat.

[Knut Högvall]

“See” as in “display” or as in “use”?

I.e. are 12 GB unused by AE?

Knut Högvall
Documentation Manager
Polystar OSIX

[Richie Tovell]

yes, see as in use.

There will be 12 gig of your ram left unused which After efects cannot access.

Sorry to be he bearer of bad new’s, it’s without a doubt the most dissapointing problem with After effects, this may be a constraint of the actual OS though, I know XP 64 will only assign 4 gig per app 🙁 it’s extremly stupid and frustraiting.

[Knut Högvall]

Bummer.

I use Vista, so it’s obviously the same case there. 🙁

Well, thanks for clearing the matter at least.

Knut Högvall
Documentation Manager
Polystar OSIX

[Richie Tovell]

It is a bummer, it means we can only preview short amounts of our projects.

The good news is you can use that 16 gig to multi task, as long as you have a fast enough processor, I dont know about Vista but XP64 asignes 4 gig to each app thats running, wich is handy as I said for multi tasking, running more than one app at once.

Hopefully Adobe will release an “extended” memory version of After effects without the 4 gig limit that will allow us to use any amount of ram we might want.

[Stuart Elith]

Also note, however, that if you have multiple cores you can use extra RAM in these (or so i’m led to believe).

See this thread for more info…
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/914619

You will need to look into the multiprocessor settings in AE. I use the great BG Renderer script which allows me to use more processors with additional RAM.

[Knut Högvall]

And where can I find this amazing script? 🙂

Knut Högvall
Documentation Manager
Polystar OSIX

[Stuart Elith]

The same way you find anything else on the internet… by googling! It is simply called BG renderer, and the first results provide a link and some threads about it.

🙂