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Alex ThisUsernameNotTaken
Participant
September 28, 2021
Question

After Effects uses too much RAM and hangs computer

  • September 28, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1374 views
As I am using Ae, it slowly eats up more and more RAM until the computer hangs, forcing a hard restart. The only way I have so far found to keep working is to keep one eye on Task Manager and periodically manually purge the RAM and Disk Cache in Ae before it overloads.
 
Notably, Ae seems not to register the amount of RAM it is using correctly. It is usually saying that it is using far less than Task Manager says it is. Consequently the 'ram reserved for other applications' failsafe does not kick in. 
 
I have
  • reserved 8GB ram for other applications
  • Have 20GB Disk Cache set to an internal (reasonably fast) HDD. When manually purging, the Disc Cache is never near full, more likely to be around 750MB of data. 
  • Have my footage on a different drive than the Disk Cache
  • Am running no 3rd party plugins in this project
  • set to Reduce Cache Size when system is low on memory
  • tried uninstalling & reinstalling Ae
  • ensured my graphics card drivers are up to date
 
I've been using this Ae setup for years, and have never encountered this issue before. This has only just started happening. Can anybody help? Having to constantly manually purge Ae's ram to stop it hanging your computer is just no way to live your life!
 
Windows 10 Pro  64bit
16GB DDR3 1333MHz  RAM
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz   3.80 GHz
Ae 18.4.1 (build 4)
 
I'm new to this, so if there is any other data that would help, please let me know! Should I just perhaps revert to the previous version of After Effects?
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    2 replies

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 28, 2021

    Try changing the ram for other applications to 4 GB to give AE a little more headroom. Do not use odd numbers of GB, your system won't like it. 

     

    If all else fails, open up the Creative Cloud app, click on the three little dots to the left of the After Effects icon and roll back to a previous version of AE. 

     

    Also, in the future, please embed your screenshots instead of using the Drag & Drop here tool. It's buggy and makes seeing your screenshots a pain. You can usually just copy a screenshot and paste it to the reply field or drag it in, or use the toolbar.

     

    Let us know if you get the problem solved.

      A
      Alex ThisUsernameNotTakenAuthor
      Participant
      September 28, 2021

      Thanks Rick! 

      Unfortunatley decreasing the RAM for other applications didn't really change matters. Next step : Rollback to the previous version! 

      H
      Hurricane Point Dave
      Participant
      December 27, 2023

      Same issue here on my brand new Windows 11 Pro with AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5945WX, 128GB, 4x32GB, DDR4, 3200MHz, NVIDIA RTX A4000, 16 GB GDDR6, 4 DP. I have to keep watching my task manager and hitting purge. Did rolling back to a prevoius version work for you? 

      A
      Alex ThisUsernameNotTakenAuthor
      Participant
      September 28, 2021

      I've also attached a screenshot as part of the original post to show the Task Manager / After Effects RAM usage discrepancy. Apologies if this is not obvious! 

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