Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

After Effects Secret menu

C

Chris Vrakotas

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
65
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Athens, Greece
Website
www.spectral.com.gr
This is very useful info for all of us who face memory & performance problems with AE.

Press CTRL + Alt + Shift buttons, keep pressing and --> Edit/Preferences/General
At the bottom you'll see "Secret".
Check "Disable Layer Cache"
Adjust "Purge Every 1 frame during make movie"

Voila! Memory clears every 1 frame, no memory problems.
Don't ask why a such piece of software has a secret menu.

I hope this helps
Chris
 
Interesting, though I'm not a big user of AE and haven't had the need for that as yet. Then again, with 12GB of RAM in my new system, memory issues likely aren't an issue for me.... :)

Cheers,

Paul
 
Paul Leeming said:
Then again, with 12GB of RAM in my new system, memory issues likely aren't an issue for me.... :)
Click to expand...

I have massive memory problems when trying to use CS4 with Neatvideo, and my machine has 16 GB! Gonna try this ASAP, thank you.
 
Thanks!:beer:
that will definitely help....so frustrating.
Now..if there was only such a 'secret menu' on FCP that skipped the never-ending rendering process. :head_explode:
 
I used to have this issue with my last system, the clear memory cache solved that problem, but on my new system with a core i7 and 12GB ram I have never had a single memory issue. So while this may "solve" your problem temporarily, adding more RAM is really the way to go.
 
Jason Diamond said:
be aware that lowering this number will most likely increase your render times....
Click to expand...

AE had that schecret hidden prefs for a very long time.
Depending on the kind of projects you work with you may not want the purge every n frame feature to be enabled. If you are compositing several layers, working with still elements, vector masks... purging caches may impact your render times badly.
But in our situation with motion footage and a new image at each frame it might be a good idea in low memory situation as the data from the previous frame is in no way useful to render the new one. So purging cache might indeed help decoding and processing the next 4k raw image.

HTH

Mikael Lubtchansky
 
Paul Leeming said:
Interesting, though I'm not a big user of AE and haven't had the need for that as yet. Then again, with 12GB of RAM in my new system, memory issues likely aren't an issue for me.... :)

Cheers,

Paul
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but AE doesn't use more than 2GB Ram...
 
mikael said:
AE had that schecret hidden prefs for a very long time.
Depending on the kind of projects you work with you may not want the purge every n frame feature to be enabled. If you are compositing several layers, working with still elements, vector masks... purging caches may impact your render times badly.
But in our situation with motion footage and a new image at each frame it might be a good idea in low memory situation as the data from the previous frame is in no way useful to render the new one. So purging cache might indeed help decoding and processing the next 4k raw image.

HTH

Mikael Lubtchansky
Click to expand...


Mikael,

Maybe its true what you're saying, (I haven't tested yet) but sometimes bigger render times is the least of our problems.
I used extensively AE CS3 for a project for Volcanology Museum in Nisyros ( a small Greek volcanic island), with a lot of 3d explosions, particle, etc. The compositions were 3.000 - 4.000 frames long and I kept my fingers crossed, because every 300-500 frames AE was frozen. If I knew about the secret menu I would prefer to need an additional night for render while I was sleeping, than staying in front of the monitor with cups of coffee.
 
Stefan Scherperel said:
I used to have this issue with my last system, the clear memory cache solved that problem, but on my new system with a core i7 and 12GB ram I have never had a single memory issue. So while this may "solve" your problem temporarily, adding more RAM is really the way to go.
Click to expand...

Can AE utilise all of your Ram? If yes, that great.
In my PC with 4GB Ram, whenever AE boots, and see "2GB of Ram used", I think bad things about Adobe ...:head_explode:
 
Vince K said:
Thanks!:beer:
that will definitely help....so frustrating.
Now..if there was only such a 'secret menu' on FCP that skipped the never-ending rendering process. :head_explode:
Click to expand...

There is... it's called Avid. :wink:
 
Chris Vrakotas said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but AE doesn't use more than 2GB Ram...
Click to expand...

With multi-processing turned on, AE will use as much RAM as you have. Using a combination of the Multiprocessing settings and the Memory and Cache settings you can set your machine to use a balanced amount of RAM per processor when it renders. This is one reason why I like to have 1 GB of RAM per processor or a number divisible by the amount of processors. On my dual quad core (8 processor) mac, I have 8 GB ram. I can even quit the Finder to reduce system overhead when I render.

Multiprocessing rendering works in bursts, it looks like it takes a long time per frame, but then it rattles off 8 frames in no time flat.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top