Exciting news for After Effects users! Say goodbye to RAM limitations and hello to smoother, longer playback! We are thrilled to announce that Improved Caching for Longer Playback is now available for After Effects Beta users beginning in version 25.2.0.079. Gone are the days where you need to buff up your system with massive amounts of RAM to preview your comp. This exciting update transforms how playback works in After Effects, moving beyond the constraints of RAM Preview to a more efficient disk-based system. What’s New Improved Caching for Longer Playback enables you to render and play back your entire composition without being constrained by RAM allocation. By utilizing the disk cache more efficiently, After Effects can now: Deliver longer playback durations Improve performance especially on systems with lower specifications Why Does it Matter to You Previously, After Effects would stop rendering when memory was exhausted, resulting in partial composition playback. Now, with Improved Caching for Longer Playback: After Effects will render entire compositions without RAM size constraints (4K? 60fps? You no longer need to render partial work areas!) RAM is used more efficiently to render individual frames The system dynamically cycles between disk and memory as needed Getting Started Improved Caching for Longer Playback is activated by default from version 25.2.0.079 of After Effects Beta. No additional setup is required to start experiencing the benefits. If you need to disable Improved Caching for Longer Playback, please go to “Preferences” -> “Media & Disk Cache” -> “Advanced Options” -> Uncheck “Enable Preview from Disk Cache” We Want Your Feedback Test this feature with your projects and let us know: How does the playback duration compare to your previous experience? Are you noticing smoother preview/playback experiences? The cache bar (the blue and green bar under your composition) behaves differently than before: is it distracting? Is it confusing? Have you encountered any specific challenges or limitations? Share Your Experience - Leave a comment with the following information: Your hardware specifications: Total system memory (GB) RAM available for AE (GB) Maximum Disk Cache Size in AE Preferences (GB) Available disk space (GB) Type/make of disk Your experience with Improved Caching for Longer Playback If you detect any problems with quality, submit your projects Open your After Effects project Go to File -> Dependencies -> Collect Files Choose Collect -> Save As (Name Your Folder) After Effects will compile your .aep file, footage, and a text report Zip the folder and share the link with us in the comment section below (your projects will remain confidential and will be used for testing purposes only!) Known Issues and Feature Limitations The disk cache size and speed are limiting factors. The disk size limits preview duration. The disk speed limits the bitrate (frame size / FPS / bit-depth) of what can be previewed in real-time. Looking Ahead This is just the beginning of our journey to transform the way After Effects handles playback. Beta testing of Improved Caching for Longer Playback will last a little longer than some of our other features because it fundamentally changes how preview works on After Effects and we want to get it right! Internally, we have been testing a representative sample of projects with a suite of hardware configurations, and we are excited to finally put this feature in your hands and get your feedback. Test your unique projects on your hardware so we can ensure that our performance updates benefit all customers and meet quality metrics before launch. Your feedback during this beta phase is crucial in helping us refine and perfect this feature before its official release. We are excited to see how Improved Caching for Longer Playback enhances your creative workflow and look forward to your valuable feedback!

Adobe Employee

Question

Improved Caching for Longer Playback: A New Era of Composition Playback in After Effects

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 15, 2025
11 replies
14188 views

Exciting news for After Effects users! Say goodbye to RAM limitations and hello to smoother, longer playback!

We are thrilled to announce that Improved Caching for Longer Playback is now available for After Effects Beta users beginning in version 25.2.0.079. Gone are the days where you need to buff up your system with massive amounts of RAM to preview your comp. This exciting update transforms how playback works in After Effects, moving beyond the constraints of RAM Preview to a more efficient disk-based system.

What’s New

Improved Caching for Longer Playback enables you to render and play back your entire composition without being constrained by RAM allocation. By utilizing the disk cache more efficiently, After Effects can now:

Deliver longer playback durations

Improve performance especially on systems with lower specifications

Why Does it Matter to You

Previously, After Effects would stop rendering when memory was exhausted, resulting in partial composition playback. Now, with Improved Caching for Longer Playback:

After Effects will render entire compositions without RAM size constraints (4K? 60fps? You no longer need to render partial work areas!)

RAM is used more efficiently to render individual frames

The system dynamically cycles between disk and memory as needed

Getting Started

Improved Caching for Longer Playback is activated by default from version 25.2.0.079 of After Effects Beta. No additional setup is required to start experiencing the benefits.

If you need to disable Improved Caching for Longer Playback, please go to “Preferences” -> “Media & Disk Cache” -> “Advanced Options” -> Uncheck “Enable Preview from Disk Cache”

We Want Your Feedback

Test this feature with your projects and let us know:

How does the playback duration compare to your previous experience?

Are you noticing smoother preview/playback experiences?

The cache bar (the blue and green bar under your composition) behaves differently than before: is it distracting? Is it confusing?

Have you encountered any specific challenges or limitations?

Share Your Experience - Leave a comment with the following information:

Your hardware specifications:

Total system memory (GB)

RAM available for AE (GB)

Maximum Disk Cache Size in AE Preferences (GB)

Available disk space (GB)

Type/make of disk

Your experience with Improved Caching for Longer Playback

If you detect any problems with quality, submit your projects

Open your After Effects project

Go to File -> Dependencies -> Collect Files

Choose Collect -> Save As (Name Your Folder)

After Effects will compile your .aep file, footage, and a text report

Zip the folder and share the link with us in the comment section below (your projects will remain confidential and will be used for testing purposes only!)

Known Issues and Feature Limitations

The disk cache size and speed are limiting factors. The disk size limits preview duration. The disk speed limits the bitrate (frame size / FPS / bit-depth) of what can be previewed in real-time.

Looking Ahead

This is just the beginning of our journey to transform the way After Effects handles playback. Beta testing of Improved Caching for Longer Playback will last a little longer than some of our other features because it fundamentally changes how preview works on After Effects and we want to get it right!

Internally, we have been testing a representative sample of projects with a suite of hardware configurations, and we are excited to finally put this feature in your hands and get your feedback. Test your unique projects on your hardware so we can ensure that our performance updates benefit all customers and meet quality metrics before launch.

Your feedback during this beta phase is crucial in helping us refine and perfect this feature before its official release. We are excited to see how Improved Caching for Longer Playback enhances your creative workflow and look forward to your valuable feedback!

Performance

M

mezdzn

Participant

Does this only work with actual clips? Because when i try it on my composition (just an animation all made in AE), i doesnt work, playback is still very laggy. i have 64GB RAM and ive allocated 800GB for disk cache.

A

Avi_AEAuthor

Adobe Employee

Hi mezdzn! Improved caching should work with all types of compositions, including animations created entirely in AE, not just imported clips.

With 64GB RAM and 800GB disk cache allocation, your system should definitely handle this well. Few quick questions to help troubleshoot:

Which version of After Effects are you using?
Is "Enable Preview from Disk Cache" checked in Preferences > Media & Disk Cache?
Could you please share a screen recording of your playback experience?

This will help us figure out what might be causing the continued lag.

M

mezdzn

Participant

Im using the latest After Effects, i believe its v25.2.2

Yes, as seen in the video, its enabled.

AdobeVideo.zip

Manaus

Inspiring

Ok, this feels VERY fast.
I just tested out two projects that was taking a long time to cache, let alone preview, and now, with the Beta, it FEELS SO FAST OMG.

I must confess I thought this was going to be good, but not as good. It feels incredible to work with a lot of essential graphics and heavy expressions.

Future looks bright! Congrats dev team!

Manaus

Inspiring

For real, I'm testing with previous builds of After Effects and I cannot belive how fast it is
The timeline, for once, doesn't lag, feels very crispy

Goddammm this is awesome.

S

sinse73

Participating Frequently

While I think this is cool -- and I do love a great feature, especially when it involves performance -- I am a bit perturbed. I just bought a system (plus I have a system for work), both with 1TB of storage, which is for applications (and basically acts as a downloads folder). I usually have about 400-600GB of space left on average, depending on the workload. I work hybrid/remotely, so I have both a MacBook Pro (M3 Max) for work and a Mac Mini (M4 Pro) for home, and run my projects and store my files on externals. Until recently, I was using a Thunderbolt 3 external drive that ran at ~1800MB/s read and write (which was fine -- no issues), and just graduated to a Thunderbolt 4 external drive that runs at ~3000 read and write speeds. While I know that isn't close to internal speeds (my MBP and MM both have internal speeds of ~5000+ read and write), I do understand for this feature to really work, you need fast storage.

I have always bought my systems with a tonne of RAM (as much as I could afford) as I knew Ae (my professional tool) would eat as much RAM as it could. Now with this caching feature, and RAM not being as much a priority, and me only having a pool of roughly 500GB of storage available, I am concerned that my system will run out of space, especially on Apple Silicon that already uses swap.

A few questions:

What is the minimum cache size you recommend?
If this feature becomes stock, will I still be able to uncheck “Enable Preview from Disk Cache?" (so I can prioritize RAM over cache for previews)?
What should the minimum speed of an external storage drive be?
What does this mean for the next system I will eventually get? (ie: "you should priortize a good balance of RAM and storage...")

MacBook Pro M3 Max:

Total system memory (GB): 96GB

RAM available for AE (GB): 72GB

Maximum Disk Cache Size in AE Preferences (GB): (TB4 external 1TB partition) 900GB

Available disk space (GB): (currently) 700GB

Type/make of disk: Orico ‎O7000-2TB, NVMe SSD PCIe M.2 SSD 2280 PCIe 4.0X4 in a HyperDrive Next Portable 40Gbps USB4 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure
Your experience with Improved Caching for Longer Playback: N/A (still in testing)

Mac Mini M4 Pro:

Total system memory (GB): 64GB

RAM available for AE (GB): 52GB

Maximum Disk Cache Size in AE Preferences (GB): (TB4 external 1TB partition) 900GB

Available disk space (GB): (currently) 750GB

Type/make of disk: Orico ‎O7000-2TB, NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD 2280 PCIe 4.0X4 in a HyperDrive Next Portable 40Gbps USB4 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure
Your experience with Improved Caching for Longer Playback: N/A (still in testing)

sskaz

Inspiring

RE: “What should the minimum speed of an external storage drive be?”

If we can assume AE is caching frames more-or-less as uncompressed video, judging by Avi_AE’s post: (my underline emphasis added)

Known Issues and Feature Limitations
The disk cache size and speed are limiting factors. The disk size limits preview duration. The disk speed limits the bitrate (frame size / FPS / bit-depth) of what can be previewed in real-time.

Then we can calculate the needed speed for realtime playback using an uncompressed video bitrate calculator, like this one. UHD (3840×2160) using 16bpc at 30.0 fps is about 1,898 MB/s. Even with, being generous, +20% overhead (~2,200 MB/s), that’s within your external drive’s ~3,000 MB/s speed. And if you’re working in 1080p comps (~475 MB/s), you have plenty of bandwidth to spare.

If you’re working in extremely large comp sizes and/or have a slower drive, we can hope that AE previews just like it does now, just using RAM (perhaps like the existing low memory/expression error message banners?). If AE isn’t smart enough to detect that it can’t maintain realtime playback consistently, let’s hope the new “Enable Preview from Disk Cache” setting remains (I would assume so? I can’t remember the last time a new preference toggle added in a beta was removed in the stable release).

S

sinse73

Participating Frequently

Right on, excellent. I'm hoping for the best possible outcomes. Thanks for your input, @sskaz!

S

shnaishnfx

Participant

improvements in years

G

Graham Hutchins

Inspiring

I'm gathering hardware to uptate my workstation and opted for 192 GB of RAM and a 1 TB gen4 nvme cache drive.

This new functionality has be thinking that I need to lower my total RAM (with the memory speed gains that come along with that on Windows based systems) and opting for a larger cache drive.

Thoughts?

GMF

Participant

Same question, just bought all the equipment to build a new workstation.

Is the hierarchy still RAM > cache space for timeline efficiency?

sskaz

Inspiring

RAM is anywhere from like 10-100× faster than even the fastest Thunderbolt-connected storage, so if money is no issue, go for the extra ram. But with this new change, you could buy a 1TB nvme drive for “ram cache” for under $100, which is far more RAM than most systems could fit.

P

pankaj16B6

Participant

I just tried this and must say its game changer as i was able to preview entire(45 sec) 4k timeline which was not possible earlier, thanks AE team!

T

Tom Balev

Community Expert

Perfect!

W

Warren Heaton10841144

Community Expert

Perforance improvements are always welcome. Thank you.

O

oleksandr_4746

Participant

Sounds awesome
Is it just for windows so far?
Can't see this on mac

A

Avi_AEAuthor

Adobe Employee

It is available on both Windows and Mac. Update your After Effects Beta app on Creative Cloud Desktop to the latest version (25.2.0.079). Improved Caching should be activated by default in this version.

O

oleksandr_4746

Participant

Just re-installed.

1

1suky1

Known Participant

First impressions: I am actually impressed!!!

One of the most annoying "bugs" plaguing me personally was the ram preview limitation. Sometimes AE would only preview a couple of frames when it should preview way more, and it would say out of memory when it's not. I would then have to clear all cache and memory and then it would start previewing normally. This new feature fixes that. Basically, my disk cache size is now the actual preview limit.

So far I noticed 3 bugs:
1. Making any adjustments to a layer that is shorter than the timeline removes the blue and green cache bar. Good thing it's only visual by the looks of it, the frames are still cached but just the bar is cleared.
2. Same thing happens in nested compositions. If I cache entire comp, going into parent comp the frames are still cached but timeline doesn't show it.
3. When "Cache Before Playback" is checked, even if the entire timeline is cached to disk, preview still has to do a full sweep of "caching" it to RAM, even though all frames are cached and playback should start.

But other than that I did some testing and it's pretty interesting. I use 500gb disk cache. I limited AE to only 1gb of RAM and it just kept previewing and caching to disk. And going back to cached frames it would play without an issue. So now with this, it will potentially be more important to have a nice dedicated cache disk than something like 128gb of ram.

As for my specs:

CPU: AMD 7950x
RAM: 64GB 5600mhz
OS disk: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB NVMe
Cache disk: Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe (Cache limited to 500gb)
Project disk: 8TB Samsung 970 SSD

GPU: RTX 4090

A

Avi_AEAuthor

Adobe Employee

Hello @1suky1! Glad to know that you see the benefits of Improved Caching already.

These are very interesting observations. Thank you so much for sharing. We are looking into this behaviour and trying to reproduce at our end. We will keep you updated / reach out for further questions! 🙂

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