RAM Preview Instability

[SebbieJ]

After Effects fails to play back RAM preview consistently. Once I have numpad-0'd the timeline in to a RAM Preview, After Effects more often than not fails to play back the timeline smoothly, and very oftenly doesn't play it back at all. This can be very time consuming when timelines can sometimes take 5-10 minutes or longer to cache in to the RAM. Hitting numpad-0 once the comp has been loaded in to it's cache sometimes doesn't even do anything, AE can just hang there.

Steps:

Hit Numpad-0 to RAM preview.

Wait for shot to be rendered in to the RAM. 

When AE has loaded it in to the ram, it then fails to play back the comp at full speed (despite running a Threadripper 1950X processor, an RTX2080Ti and a RTX3060), or fails to play it at all.

I then have to either flush the cache and re-try it and/or re-open AE in order for it to play.

The shots I'm working on can be fairly complicated, working with either multilayered EXRs from V-Ray, sometimes mixed with live action, and/or some keying comps with various post layers/effects added for compositing purposes). I appreciate that this does of course has an effect on performance whilst I'm working with the comps, but some better stability when viewing and creating RAM previews would be greatly appreciated! 

[nishu_kush]

Does After Effects fails to preview despite showing the green line in the Timeline? Could you share some details about the project? What type of footage (frame rate, frame size, format/codec)? Which effects and plug-ins are used? Do you see the issue in a simple project? Or is it just the complex projects? Feel free to share screenshots or screen recordings to help us to understand the problem better. 

Let us know.

Note: Moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Nishu