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Bart111
Inspiring
May 9, 2022
Answered

[64 GB RAM] I have a High RAM/Memory Usage: 94% (ordinary video.mp4 - 10 min, added just 1 effects)

  • May 9, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 12468 views

Good morning

I just started my adventure with After Effect and there was a technical problem. I would like to ask you for help in solving this problem. My computer has 64,0 GB RAM.


New Project --> New Composition From Footage --> I import an ordinary video.mp4 (which has about 10 minutes) --> I added 1 or 2 any effects --> I have a High RAM/Memory Usage: 94%

Task Manager:
Memory Usage: 89% - 94%


I did:
- I reinstalled After Effect (AE ver.: 22.3)
- In Preferences, in Media & Disk Cache I clicked Empty Disk Cache and I changed folders for Database and Cache
- Checked with an other video – still the same problem
- I updated nvidia drivers



Additionally when I add any one effect and I click play video once plays well and after a while the voice starts to get thicker and slower etc., . Also buffers (Preview) too slowly in my opinion. Because as I wrote, I didn't add 20 effects, but only (1 - 2).

I am surprised because it is a fairly new computer with very good parameters.

With other Adobe programs (including Adobre Premiere), apart from minor occasional slowdowns, I had no problem.

 

I added to post print screens. Even if I close the browser, RAM still reaches 84%.


My computer:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor 3.40 GHz / RTX3080Ti 12GB / 64GB DDR4 3600MHz / SSD M.2 500GB + SSD M.2 500GB + HDD 4TB / 1000W / Wl0Pro

    Correct answer zandwacht

    This is normal and expected behaviour. The amount of effects you apply doesn't matter. AfterEffects is loading all of your rendered frames into ram, that's what it's designed to do. Disk cache is only used when RAM is full.

     

    They only way to reduce ram usage is to go to preferences > memory and performance and increase "RAM reserved for other applications". If you set that to 32Gb for instance, AfterEffects will still take 32Gb during normal operation but leave the rest to OS and other applications.

    4 replies

    M
    marijan999
    Participating Frequently
    August 24, 2022

    HI all,

     

    i also have similar problem. premiere is running anf then i run AE and Media Encoder and then it happens like on image 1. When i close AE in task manager it still runs under premere pro and uses a lot of RAM despite settings and limitations in premiere and AE (image 2).

    Searched for answer but cannot find it. reinstalled everything. i have 64GB RAM and SSD, ryzen 5900, nvidia RTX 3060. and tha started happening from some update i'm not sure which one

    if anyone have any info i would appreciate it.

      P
      Peter_Apple
      Participating Frequently
      July 7, 2023

      Fixed?

      M
      marijan999
      Participating Frequently
      July 7, 2023

      with latest updates, a month or two ago, i even had a proje ct i couldnt open and now i can and memory thing reduced but still occurs sometimes

       

      zandwacht
      zandwachtCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      May 11, 2022

      This is normal and expected behaviour. The amount of effects you apply doesn't matter. AfterEffects is loading all of your rendered frames into ram, that's what it's designed to do. Disk cache is only used when RAM is full.

       

      They only way to reduce ram usage is to go to preferences > memory and performance and increase "RAM reserved for other applications". If you set that to 32Gb for instance, AfterEffects will still take 32Gb during normal operation but leave the rest to OS and other applications.

        B
        Bart111Author
        Inspiring
        May 12, 2022

        @Mylenium @zandwacht Thank you for being involved in solving my problem.

         

        @zandwachtI did what you wrote and actually cut my RAM usage down to 52% so I'm happy.

        Can you write me else if you know any way to improve the smoothness of playback. Because when I add a few effects then video along with the voice (sound) it slows down significantly. The green bar (what is it exactly called? Current rendering in preview?) Does not load fast enough to be able to see the current effect of my work at the moment.

        Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me!

         

        zandwacht
        zandwacht
        Inspiring
        May 12, 2022

        Playback in AE is often not real-time. The green bar means that frames were rendered and in ram. What many people do to see faster previews, is to go to the "preview" pallette or (choose Window > preview to show it) and set previews to half resolution and frame skip to "1". These low res previews are often enough to work. You can also shorten the work area, to render only a shorter area. If you check "cache before playback", then the green bar fills up first for your work area, and playback starts only when that area is rendered. This avoids stutters.

         

        Bonus tip: try disabling multi frame rendering. On some computers and projects its slower than the promised speed gains. I've personally never known it to be faster for vector motion graphics on my iMac Pro.

          Mylenium
          Mylenium
          Legend
          May 11, 2022

          Excessive memory usage is typically a sign of a leaky driver or DLL and not related to the program itself. Hence why it is so difficult to track down these issues. If you haven't already, an excursion to your device manager and letting it check for updated drivers might be a good start. This really could be something weird and trivial that you're not even thinking of like a specific driver for your processor/ motherboard or your storage device(s). Also boot into safe mode and then boot back into normal mode at least once. Since it forces Windows to clean up its act and reorganize a few files it may improve behavior and reveal potential issues.

           

          Mylenium

            Mylenium
            Mylenium
            Legend
            May 10, 2022

            Turn off multiframe rendering and turn down the disk cache and memory usage sizes. From you images AE is perfectly honoring these settings, so this quite likely is an external issue with AE just producing too much cache data and the system not being able to keep up. No easy answers, here, though. You simply have to monitor the situation via your task manager/ resource monitor or extra tools like Sysinternals' Process Monitor.

             

            Mylenium

            B
            Bart111Author
            Inspiring
            May 10, 2022

            @Mylenium Thank you for you answer but unfortunately the problem still exist.

            As you wrote I turn off Multi-Frame Rendering and turn down Maximum Disk Cache Size for 4 GB.

             

            I ran the program, created a project and added mp4. I didn't even add any effect and I didn't press the play button and the RAM memory increased until it reached 89%.

             

            "so this quite likely is an external issue with AE just producing too much cache data and the system not being able to keep up" - Do I understand correctly that the problem is rather After Effect and I should wait until the next update? However, is something on my computer not working properly (if so then what?) And should I advertise it?

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