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Inspiring
June 29, 2016
Answered

RAM Preview – Not in real-time

  • June 29, 2016
  • 33 replies
  • 110318 views

Hello.

I'm having a hard time dealing with this new Preview in AE. A lot of times it is not giving me a real-time playback.

It is nice to have the preview continuously playing while making some changes on the comp, but sometimes I would like to have a real-time preview, like the old RAM preview.

Is it possible to generate a real-time RAM preview? I don't mind waiting for AE to render before playing back the animation.

I have tried the Numpad 0 and also spacebar. I've tried to purge all, restart machine, etc...

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Andre Arruda

After Effects 2015.3 (13.8.0.144)

Mac Pro (Late 2013)

3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5

64 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC

Correct answer andrecostabr2

papanapa wrote:

My monitor (Samsung 4k) is running on 30Hz, even though the Mac Pro and the monitor both support 60Hz. Could that be an issue?

Possibly. Your scene description should DEFINITELY have no problem playing back in real time, so something is amiss and that would be the first thing I'd troubleshoot if I were in your position.


Changing the monitor to 60Hz solved the problem here =]

33 replies

Participating Frequently
May 15, 2025

Still issue even in 2025...

einzelbild
Inspiring
May 23, 2024

For me it was deactivating "use display color managment" - unfortunately then I can't use linearized color working space.

Inspiring
March 6, 2023

Hi there! I am having that same annoying issue! There's no other software suffering this type of issues of playing back CACHED frames! I am on a TRPro, 256GB RAM, NVME Cache, rtx3090. I want to preview a 4k,  30fps project (pretty standard graphics anim + 1 layer videofootage). And I need "display color management" to be on rec709.  I've done everything (cache, database, ... rearrange panels was the latest), but still getting around 22 fps. What IS WRONG Adobe??

Participant
March 6, 2023

I have continuing issues with AE 2023 - Try using 2020 if you have that option. Works perfectly for me.

robertd43652856
Known Participant
November 29, 2022

For those who still have this issue - make sure that your comp frame rate is set as the same as your preview pannel frame rate.

santiago san
Participant
November 15, 2021

I'm truly amazed how a post from mid 2016 is actually helping me to solve a bug in the 2022 AE version!! How on earth something like this is making his way version after version? Reducing app size, puting library panel bellow timeline, reducing the timeline vertical size? what are those kind of solutions? I use After effects since 1999, I love it, but there are things that are just incredible, and just shows that probably the team behind is smaller and more overwhelmed than we think.

Participant
October 22, 2021

This is so unbelievable frustrating, the year is 2021 and this problem still exists. Oh boy I really miss the old days when the green bar meant rock solid preview. What when wrong, Adobe?

Inspiring
June 4, 2021

In my case Ae only previews at full speed after a fresh restart of my Mac. After some time with switching apps etc. the preview gets slow and sluggish, not reaching 25 fps, even when the timeline is completely green.

Meanwhile other apps and video on websites play full hd without any pain, but Ae can not play quarter size preview. It seems tomlose it's resources and doesn't take those back when other apps are closed, or ecen when Ae is restarted. Only a restart of the complete system brings back preview speed.

Known Participant
June 9, 2021

I have been fighting this issue for a long time on my iMac pro at work.  I'll think its working better and then it isn't.  Every release I'll hope its fixed and am dissapointed.  Previews work just fine on my much older 2013 iMac at home.  Out of frustration, I just downloaded the latest Beta(with multiframe rendering).  They seem to have finally fixed it in the Beta!  My previews are playing back fine on the iMac pro.  I don't usually like to run Beta software in a production environment, but the Beta currently seems more usable than the release version.  I have only just started using it so there may be pitfalls, but it seems a lot better.  I would recommend trying it for anyone with this issue.  Back up your project first.

BurningChariot
Participant
April 18, 2021

I'm using AE 2021 April updates, I have a 4k monitor, it's barely hitting 10fps when my program window is full size. Reducing the window to around a 1/4 of the screen realestate immedietly fixes this issue. Up until AE 2019/20, this never happened, I'm still on the same workstation and it's extremely frustrating. I really hope Adobe put some energy into fixing this bug asap!

alejandro alg
Participant
June 4, 2021

this is so terrible! I'm on a Windows Surface Studio Pro and I'm also barely hitting 10fps. How can I produce Pro-fessional content without being able to render my projects??

Participant
April 15, 2021

Hi ,Hello  i am sorry to say this  bcz i changed my moniotor to 60hz but still my AE cc 2021 is not play in real time

plz help me to resolve it ..

thank you

kirubhas98
Participant
March 7, 2021

I found a way who are searching for, even when this solution doesn't work,

 please unselect the circled option which enables motion controls while previewing, its slows down playback even if full timeline is cached.

Participant
October 29, 2021

This worked for me. Thanks a lot 🙂