"RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames" error back in CS6

[EchoOut]

Hey everyone,

I'm quite familiar with this old error and how to avoid it and fix it but when preparing new CS6 lessons for my classes it just seems to come up again and again without any apparent relationship to the assets I'm working with. I've mostly been preparing some "What's New in CS6" lessons and have had this error come up using Evironment Layers, Raytracing lessons, Motion Tracker lessons, etc. using text, footage, solids, you name it.

The main thing that seems really telling is that before this issue happens, the blue and/or green cache bars seem to be gone within my workspace range. Purging the caches doesn't fix it but closing and reopening AE does fix it.

Using the updates AE 11.0.0.378 on OS10.6.8 MacBook Pro 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM

All prefs are set to the defaults.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

steven

[Todd_Kopriva]

No, we have not given up on this issue.

Here's an explanation.

This error message is After Effects telling you that it can't do a RAM preview because it can't render and preview at least two frames. This state has many causes, though:

One cause is operator error. If you have the current-time indicator at the end of the composition or work area, and you have From Current Time enabled in the Preview panel, then you'll get this message when trying to RAM preview. This is because you're already at the end of the previewable duration.

Another cause is a badly behaved plug-in that is demanding waaaaaay too much memory, so After Effects can't render two frames using this plug-in. (Video Copilot Reflection has been known to behave badly in this way, for example.)

The two above causes apply to all versions of After Effects.

A cause that only applies to After Effects CS6 is a bit more problematic and technical. In previous versions of After Effects, when you started a RAM preview, After Effects would start rendering frames and storing them in RAM without first checking to see how much memory was available; it would stop when it ran out of RAM, wherever that might be. But this was potentially a very rude thing for After Effects to do, since it might be forcing other contents of RAM used by other programs out of RAM and onto the disk (paging), which can cause some slowdowns. So, in After Effects CS6, the program first does a check to see how much RAM is available. And here's the problem: Mac OS is bad about communicating how much RAM is really available. In fact, in many cases, it says that almost no RAM is available... and After Effects CS6 believes it and reports that it doesn't have enough RAM to render and store two frames. Specifically, After Effects is asking how much RAM is "free". If you leave Mac OS running for a long time, the amount of "free" memory dwindles to nearly nothing under normal operation, as the OS accumulates a lot of stuff in "inactive" memory, which is not reported as "free". Previous verisons of After Effects would go ahead and use this "inactive" memory for RAM preview, and perhaps After Effects CS6 should, too. We're discussing how we can best fix this.

So, what can you do? There are some command-line ways of purging "inactive" memory and making it free in Mac OS. I won't recommend any specific ones here, but a quick search on the Internet will turn them up. But a guaranteed and easy way of doing this is to restart the operating system.

[Megumi2]

Hello Todd

Your solutions did not fix my problem:

- Operator "error" - it doesn't matter where the timline or work area is.

- plugins - dont have any

- purging memory - if i restart my machine the problem reappears after a few mins of working in after effects.

Megumi

[Rick Gerard]

Megumi2 wrote:

Hello Todd

Your solutions did not fix my problem:

I'm not sure if this will help or not but I had this problem on a MacBook with 4GB ram. I had a bunch of other software installed on the MB and the error popped up very often. To make a long story short I ended up passing the computer down to my daughter. I just dropped a new HD in the machine, installed Mountain Lion, and then did an install of CS6. AE now works fine. My conclusion is that there was something installed, some other software or codec, that was contributing to the rendering error. I don't have any idea what it was, but when I boot my new MBPro from the HD that came out of the Old computer AE has no problems at all. The biggest difference is that the new computer has 16GB of ram.

[Megumi2]

Thanks Rick

I dont have 16G of Ram, but 4G is listed as ok in the AE 6 system requirements.

AE 5 runs fine with it, so i cant really blame my hardware setup.

Megumi

[The_Scarlet_Avenger]

None of this is helpful at all.  I can't believe this issue still hasn't been fixed.  I simply can't work with After Effects CS6 anymore.

[rmaehl]

I was having all the same issues with the '2 Frame preview' business. Turned out to be the lenscare 'out of focus' plugin.

In fairness is was an older version from Frischluft.com (lenscare_AE_v1.44).  I updated to lenscare_AE_v1.46 and all the problems went away.

This was not only causing me problems with playback, but was also providing me with black frames.  This turned out be the result of the old plugin being part of a masking operation.

My comps are 1920x1080 if full res preview and playing just fine.

I believe there has already been some discussion about plugins not working well with CS6.  Would be wise to be sure that all plugins being used were up to date.

Hope this helps somebody.

Cheers,

Russ

[Megumi2]

Im in the same situation as Scarlet above

AE 6 is unuselable for me

[oliphantscott]

OSX 10.6.1, 12 core mac pro with 48GB of ram and I get this message without using any plugins. The only plugin we've reinstalled for cs6 is trapcode particular, which is not even in the comp. Tried clearing cache etc, to no avail. After waiting a few minutes, it ram previewed 15 frames and stopped like ram filled up which is impossible with the amount I'm running. Very disappointed so far with cs6 all around, this just appers to be another annoyance.

[itswilder-CP38k0]

Have you tried restarting? That helped solve it for me and several others here by clearing the system RAM. At least till it fills back up.

[rmaehl]

Tod Kopriva in post #36 has explained that one of the temporary solutions is to free up your memory.  There...he says....are number of ways, but does not give any specifics.

Since my last post, I have found that Trapcodes Particular does not play well with the new caching.  It appears more about how Particular works then to unavailable memory, but yet another caching problem to worry about.

I oversee the After Effects tools used for a large facility in Sydney, Australia.  The decision has been made to retreat back to the earliar version of After Effects.

The application as it stands is unworkable for a collaborative environment.

Ted Kopriva, who is representing Adobe has said that they are looking for answers. In the meantime it would be great to identify all plugins which have problems, and also some clear solutions to clear out cache.  Dumping all your cache should not have to be one of these solutions.

I was really looking forward to this new caching, but it is just not happening.  Hopefully Adobe has a solution soon.

Russ

[Todd_Kopriva]

(Be sure to read this post about all of the causes of this message.)

To be very specific about why restarting the computer is useful in the case of the Mac OSX inactive memory case:

The problem is that Mac OS is not releasing "inactive" memory and making it "free" memory. Restarting the computer is a crude but effective way of forcing the OS to free up "inactive" memory. As I said in a previous post, there are various little utilities that will free inactive memory that accomplish the same thing.

Note that restarting the OS is not adequate; you need to restart the computer (turn it off and on).

BTW, the reason that this is happening for After Effects CS6 is that we added a check for free memory in After Effects CS6 in an attempt to be more polite in sharing memory with other applications. Previous versions of After Effects would just stomp on the inactive memory, which could be inconvenient for applications that were counting on having quick access to that memory.

We are investigating a way to mitigate this issue, both respecting the inactive memory and giving you the ability to use After Effects on Mac OSX without needing to restart your computer or use a third-party utility.

Because this is a problem with Mac OSX memory management, the problem does not exist on Windows.

[EchoOut]

I started this topic a few months ago when I installed Production Premium CS6 onto my 2010 17" MacBook Pro that was running OSX 10.6 and already had 3 previous CS PP installs on it.

However, I've been running PP CS6 on my 2012 15" MBP with clean 10.7 install on it and no issues whatsoever.

There's a zillion variables and differences between those two computers but whatever the case, the newer install is fantastic.

Fingers crossed...

[Megumi2]

Gald you got sorted EchoOut.

I dont think Lion 10.7 will fix it as Adobe has stated above the problem is a change to how AE6 handles the RAM.

And im not about to remove AE 5 as its all ive got at the moment.

Good Luck

[Guest]

Any chance Mountain Lion might improve upon this issue?

[Rick Gerard]

There is a handy free app called FreeMemory that can be used as a simple work around to this problem. AE is not the only app that has this trouble. Apple has done a very good job on most of their OS but memory management still has some room for improvement.

[MatthewHemming]

To contribute another outlier case, I am seeing the "2 frames" bug in just one single comp in a project!

The comp is simple, with a single footage item with about a dozen keyframe animated masks. No plugins or filters are in play. If I recreate the comp from scratch, it previews fine. If I use any element from the original comp, either the footage or the mask data, I get the "2 frames" bug (that is a copy-pasted version of the footage -- if I drag it fresh from the project window and start masking all over again the same clip is just fine!).

If I precompose the comp it will not preview. I transfer the masks to a solid and precompose *that* it still will not preview. I can switch to any other comp in the project and it previews fine -- but as soon as I switch back to this one I get the dreaded dialogue box.

Flushing memory apps and restarts do not seem to be affecting this particular instance of the problem.

(I have previously seen the bug in other situations and cured it with a reboot and/or third party utility memory purge.)

For the record, I'm running AE 11.0.0.378 under Mac OS 10.7.4 on a duodeca-core Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM. AE has a dedicated SSD scratch disk. I really don't think fragmentation is my problem here.

[Todd_Kopriva]

> For the record, I'm running AE 11.0.0.378 ..

Is there a reason that you haven't installed the 11.0.1 update?

[MatthewHemming]

Todd,

My Adobe Application Manager doesn't know anything about it. I just checked now, but it says there's nothing new. I'm all set up with the Creative Cloud -- I thought these kinds of update notifications were supposed to be automagic.

Thank you for the link, though. I'll go and download it directly.

[Megumi2]

Hi Matthew

ive had some sucess with freememory

its a small app for the desktop (see post 54 above)

the problem still appears but freememory knocks it on its head

[bdelillo]

I have a project that uses Video Copilot's Twitch plugin a ton. It's currently crippling AE6. I originally built it using CS5 and opening it in CS6 brings up the same errors everyone else is having. Two frame error or it will just render three frames and stop. No playback, but only in comps that use Twitch. I definitely have enough RAM (64GB installed, only 8-10GB used at one time when the project is open). I'm able to open other comps in CS6 fine so I'm thinking it's a plugin issue. Sucks that this has to happen.

I chose to go with Premiere on this project because I knew I could link into AE with Dynamic Linking. Now that my most used plugin on the project is taken out of the game, looks like Dynamic Link is out as well. I can't help but be pissed at Apple too for rendering all the power in my Mac Pro useless under these particular circumstances.

*head desk*

[Rick Gerard]

I would immediately go to the Video Copilot website and contact their support. This twitch is the only plug-in that is causing you trouble, then the problems with the plug.  I'm not saying that memory allocation in the Mac is perfect. I'm just saying that it only stands to reason that if Twitch is the only plug-in that's causing your problem then the problem lies with twitch.

[bdelillo]

Such a "no duh" thing to do, yet I didn't think of it. Thanks for the input Rick.

I'm scheduled to get a suite of plugins soon. If any of those cause me problems I'll be sure to report back.

[Megumi2]

Restarting has no effect for me.

i mean, the problem re-appears almost imediately when i begin work again.

and i have zero plug-ins

all sotware has bugs, but i cant belive it wasnt sorted in the patch update.

ive had to revert to AE5

[GiantSimon]

I've got 24 GB of RAM; been using AE for about 15 years. In my case, I don't think it's user error, or even a plugin.

It's pretty much the "problematic and technical issue" noted above that was created with AfterEffects CS6...

Why not let end-users decide whether or not they want to "rude" about sharing RAM with other applications...When I'm working in AE, I need it to work with me, not against me.

[Atomickplaygrounds]

Hi Simon,

please, try one thing:

Go to Preferences and then open Memory & Multiprocessing. Press on the Details button.

Does the info shows anything weird on how the RAM memory is distributed?

Cheers