[Todd Kopriva]

Regarding the length of RAM previews, see this page, including the comment at the bottom: RAM and disk caches.

This will be greatly improved with the 64-bit version of After Effects, which we recently announced.

More RAM beyond what you have does help when you’re using Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing, but it won’t help you to get longer RAM previews. BTW, don’t expect Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously to improve performance in every case. The most common mistake that I see is people turning that on when they don’t have enough RAM to feed all of the processor cores or when the CPU isn’t the bottleneck in the rendering of the composition.

Here’s an entire page of tips to improve performance: “Improve performance”.

Also note that Windows XP 64 is not listed as one of the operating systems in the system requirements.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

One of the common terms for this recursive sort of image is ‘Droste’ (because one of the first famous examples was in an advertisement for Droste cocoa).

Here’s an After Effects Community Help search for Droste that pulls up some useful tutorials and a Pixel Bender plug-in.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Yes, the applications in Master Collection will run on a 64-bit OS.

Here’s a post from the After Effects product maanger about After Effects on Windows 7:
https://blogs.adobe.com/keyframes/2009/10/thinking_windows_7_all_signs_p.html

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

It sounds like you turned Live Update mode off.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> I will also go for the Xeon quadcore dual CPUs hyper threaded to 16 cores, 12 gig ram. Hopefully that will have enough grunt!

Just keep in mind that 12GB is no longer a large amount of RAM. If you’re working with large frame sizes, you really want to have 2GB or more (preferably more) per processor core. Even After Effects CS4 does best with 3-4GB per processor core. (See “Memory (RAM) usage and storage” and “CS4 Production Premium on 64-bit operating systems”.)

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

I suggest starting with the “Expression basics” section of After Effects Help and the resources that it points to.

As with any programming language, the best way to learn is often to use, dissect, and tweak examples. The “Expression examples” section includes many examples and links to many more. You’ll also find many examples linked to in context from the respective sections of the “Expression language reference” section.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

There are several such resources listed here.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

In addition to what Theo said, please file a bug report. Crashes are bad, and we want to know about them so that we can fix whatever is causing them.

There’s information on this page about filing bug reports and using the crash reporter.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Xinlai and Harry have it.

Here’s an excerpt from the Alpha Add section of the blending mode reference in After Effects Help:

“When two areas of 50% transparency overlap, the result is not 100% opacity but 75% opacity, because the default operation is multiplication. (50% of the light gets through one layer, and then 50% of the remainder gets through the next layer, so 25% gets through the system.) This is like partial transparency in the real world. But, in some cases, you don’t want this default blending. You want the two 50% opacity areas to combine to make a seamless, opaque join. You want the alpha values to be added. In these cases, use the Alpha Add blending mode.”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> I notice that while it is rendering, that after effects is only using between 50-70% of the CPU, not 100% – this is despite there being nothing else running on the computer. Is there any reason for this that I can fix to get it to use more?

I have also found that generally when rendering stuff out on this computer that dual-processing actually creates longer render times than with it on – any suggestions on how to set after effects multi-cpu preferences to take advantage of the dual-cpu’s?

I encourage you to think about this a bit differently. Don’t think in terms of trying to peg your CPU usage at 100%. Think of the goal being getting work done faster. Here’s an excerpt from the page that I pointed you to earlier:

“Using the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing feature does not speed up the rendering of all compositions. The rendering of some compositions is memory-intensive, such as when you are working with very large background plates that are several thousands of pixels tall and wide. The rendering of some compositions is bandwidth-intensive (I/O-intensive), such as when you are working with many source files, especially if they are not served by a fast, local, dedicated disk drive. The Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing feature works best at improving performance when the resource that is most exercised by the composition is CPU processing power, such as when applying a processor-intensive effect like a glow or blur.”

So, if your CPU isn’t the bottleneck, then you’re not going to see it pegged at 100%, and turning on Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing isn’t going to help.

There are a lot of suggestions for improving performance on this page. For example, one of the recommendations (paraphrased) is “install more RAM”.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.