Why does After Effects only recognise 3GB of RAM?

[Kevin Camp]

after effects is a 32-bit application, so the most ram a 32-bit application can address is 3gb. the mac os is 64-bit and can address much more (something like 16 billion gb), so it can use all of your ram to assign to various applications whether they are 32-bit or 64-bit.

in cs3, you can use the the multiprocessing option to allow ae to launch a render engine for each available processing core. since each render engine is a separate 32-bit application each can grab up to 3gb of ram. so with a 2-core laptop and multiprocessing enabled you will be able to use your 4gb of ram (note that the ae application at start up will still say 3gb, but the render engines that run in the background will be using more).

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Daniel Haskett]

cool thanks alot kevin!

dan

Animator/Illustrator
https://www.danhaskett.co.uk

[Kevin Crowley]

I have a QuadCore2 with 4GB Ram using Windows XP. When I load AE it only recognizes 2GB of RAM (I know about the 3GB switch – not using it). When I turn my memory & cache to say, 900MB and enable Multiprocessing it says one more processor will be used, which is fine. But the end result with RAM preview is slower than not using multiprocessing. Before it even starts rendering, it takes about 30 seconds (I realize this is the other instance being launched) but even when it is rendering, each frame renders slower than without multiprocessing. Also, from what I understand that initial 30 second delay should only happen the first time you preview, but it happens every time.

Does this sound right? Is it just my ram that is the bottleneck?

Thanks.