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chrisbrearley
Inspiring
September 28, 2022
Released

Disk playback instead of RAM,

  • September 28, 2022
  • 19 replies
  • 1812 views
I get that 20 years ago hard drives weren't the quickest and there was a limited choice in codecs so it made sense to playback from RAM. But now we all have SSDs and DNxHR exists I don't get why AE has not been re-written to playback straight from a hard drive rather than moving it into RAM first. It would be great for AE to playback from disk with a choice of codec and bit depth dependent on a users needs and system capability, much in the way that Resolve does with smart cache (see pic). Uncompressed I gather would be a strain on most systems but this is overkill anyway, certainly for playback - I challenge anyone to point out any differences between uncompressed and DNxHR HQ and if people wanted to keep working uncompressed then the option could always be there to playback from RAM but for me and I would assume many others 10bit DNx would be fine. This will mean longer timelines and smoother playback as AE isn't having to move disk cache to RAM for stuff further up the timeline when playing back.

    19 replies

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    j.ssuarez
    Inspiring
    September 28, 2022
    I 100% agree with this. It's 2019 and there's better hardware out there that AE can take advantage of. And I would say there's technology in Premiere that After Effects should reference, premiere doesn't have to do any caching for previewing, just hit the space bar and everything plays.

    I get that with AE there's effects and compositing involved, but still, waiting so long for a Ram preview to cache and still get dropped frames and playback issues is just not acceptable.
      F
      FeedbackCommunityMember
      Inspiring
      September 28, 2022
      Yes, hardware is fast enough this days to playback from HDDs and SSDs. AE is pretty fast though with some effects being render on the fly, but the problem as Chris noted, is that you are limited on the amount you can play back because of the RAM, working a lot on 4K now, and limitation is even worst.
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      coreyd4099031
      Known Participant
      September 28, 2022
      Absolutely agreed. We have better hardware now, and Adobe needs to update their apps to meet the new demand.
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        FeedbackCommunityMember
        Inspiring
        September 28, 2022
        Hello Chris,

        Please contact me at contact@autokroma.com we can discuss this more in depth

        Cheers,
        Antoine
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        Chris Brearley
        Participating Frequently
        September 28, 2022
        Two reasons. Firstly, RAM preview tends to drop frames on first run through. Even on a timeline which is mostly cached when using spacebar to playback I will regularly experience dropped frames and audio glitches even on sections that are already in RAM. The extra process of moving things into RAM has a hit on performance.

        Secondly, even on a system with 128GB RAM I am limited to around 150secs worth of RAM in a HD timeline. If AE played back from disk then you could conceivably cache 120mins worth of 4k using DNxHR using a 1TB spinny disk turning AE into software capable of onlining a feature.
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        FeedbackCommunityMember
        Inspiring
        September 28, 2022
        What is the source of the issue ? RAM preview not working smoothly ? Taking up too much RAM (not enough RAM for others applications or AE) ?
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        Chris Brearley
        Participating Frequently
        September 28, 2022
        Disk cache still has to go into ram as do any source files. Completely unnecessary. Don't know of any other video software that does this in the way that AE does.
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          tristansummers
          Inspiring
          September 28, 2022
          isn't that exactly what your disk cache is? MOst source files already playback in realtime if your disk is fast enough. So get nvme, or two, or four, raid them together and make them your cache. See if changing prefetch settings is needed to bypass RAM like ioFX had to... Put OS on an SATA SSD if you only have one nvme
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          FeedbackCommunityMember
          Inspiring
          September 28, 2022
          Maybe there's already a software to do the reverse of RAMDisk ?
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