Adobe 12040118 Tutorial - Page 525

Memory and storage (CS5.5, and earlier) Memory (RAM) usage in 64-bit After Effects Advantages of a 64-bit application and 64-bit address space Memory & Multiprocessing preferences Memory pool shared between After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder Memory & Multiprocessing Details dialog box Memory (RAM) requirements for rendering Purging memory (RAM) Troubleshooting memory issues Online resources about memory and multiprocessing Storage requirements for output files Caches: RAM cache, disk cache, and media cache Disk cache Media cache Memory (RAM) usage in 64-bit After Effects To the top Advantages of a 64-bit application and 64-bit address space The maximum amount of RAM that a 32-bit application can use is 4 GB, which is much less than the amount of RAM that can be installed in modern computers and addressed by 64-bit operating systems. After Effects CS4 was a 32-bit application, and it was only able to use more than 4 GB of RAM by starting separate instances (processes) of the After Effects CS4 application to render multiple frames simultaneously. After Effects CS5 is a 64-bit application, so each process can use all of the RAM addressed by 64-bit Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OS operating systems. The ability of After Effects to use large amounts of RAM per process provides several advantages: You can render much larger compositions-both for preview and for final output-with larger frame sizes and larger source files. RAM previews can be much longer. You can work with higher color bit depths without encountering memory limitations. After Effects can cache more items, which reduce the frequency with which frames and components of frames are re-rendered. Memory & Multiprocessing preferences Set memory and multiprocessing preferences by choosing Edit > Preferences > Memory & Multiprocessing (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Memory & Multiprocessing (Mac OS). As you modify settings in the Memory & Multiprocessing dialog box, After Effects dynamically updates helpful text in the dialog box that reports how it will allocate and use memory and CPUs. The RAM Reserved For Other Applications preference is relevant whether or not Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously is selected. The settings in the After Effects Multiprocessing category are relevant only if Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously is selected. Todd Kopriva provides information about optimum memory and processor settings on the Adobe website. RAM Reserved For Other Applications Increase this value to leave more RAM available for the operating system and for applications other than After Effects and the application with which it shares a memory pool. (See Memory pool shared between After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder.) If you know that you will be using a specific application along with After Effects, check its system requirements and set this value to at least the minimum amount of RAM required for that application. Because performance is best when adequate memory is left for the operating system, you can't set this value below a minimum baseline value. Render multiple frames simultaneously For a video tutorial about using Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing in After Effects, see the video2brain website. After Effects can start additional processes of the After Effects application to run in the background to assist the main foreground application with the rendering of frames for RAM previews or final output. These background processes have the name AfterFX.exe (Windows) or aeselflink (Mac OS). In this form of multiprocessing, each background process renders its own frame and runs on a separate processor core (CPU). The number of processes used to render multiple frames simultaneously is never more than the number of processors.