Rendering time depends entirely on comp frame size, comp frame rate, what is going on with the layers, the render settings, the preview settings. and your available system resources. You must allocate at least 2 GB of ram to other applications, Adobe apps like multiples of 2 GB and doesn't like fractional ram values. We have no idea what is going on in your comp, what source footage you may be using, or what your preview settings are. That's why Mylenium chastized you for not providing any information. Without some idea of what is going on with the comp and your system, meaningful suggestions to improve performance are limited to:
- Set Comp Panel Resolution to Auto
- Set Magnification Factor to 50% or less
- Turn off all unnecessary effects - ram previews should only be used for checking timing and placement of objects in the frame
- Try using Fast Draft
- If necessary - set preview to skip one or more frames
- Don't try and edit using After Effects, it is not in any way, shape, or form a video editing app - a comp should only contain a single shot or short sequence that you cannot create in an NLE like Premiere Pro (most of my comps are 1 shot under 7 seconds, my animated comps are seldom longer than one sentence or phrase of music)
- Do not customize the Comp Size and frame rate unless you have an experts knowledge of video standards, formats, and compression
- Don't monkey with render settings in the Output Module (Render Queue) or Media Encoder unless you are an expert
- If the time to render a frame is longer than it is acceptable to you, redesign the comp. My render time limit is about 5 minutes a frame, my average VFX project renders at the rate of a few frames a second, but many of them take one or two minutes a frame to render. Those complicated VFX projects are not ram previewed with all the effects, I just check the hero frames with everything turned on and send the project to render so I can judge the final product accurately
- Rendering with the C4D rendering option turned on slows things down a great deal. If you don't need to Extrude or bend 3D layers set the rendering option to Classic 3D (if you are using an earlier version of AE do not use Ray-traced Rendering unless there is absolutely no other choice - it never was efficient, it never worked very well.
That should help get you started.
Show us a screenshot of your timeline with the modified properties of all the layers revealed (select, press 'uu' and show us everything). Tell us about your design goal. Include the comp settings (easy if you have the Project Panel selected and the Comp is selected). If the problem includes rendering tell us or show us your modified rendering settings. Tell us about your system down to the last decimal point.
One more thing, your Ram Preview may only use 10% of CPU power because AE only works on one frame at a time and one frame isn't very big. If you have projects that are going to take a long time to render I strongly suggest that you invest in a Background Rendering app. I have several. RenderGarden is my favorite. With most BG rendering solutions you can start a render and continue to work in AE on your next comp without any noticeable slowdown. They are well worth the investment.
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