RAM Preview – Not in real-time

[andrecostabr2]

Hello.

I'm having a hard time dealing with this new Preview in AE. A lot of times it is not giving me a real-time playback.

It is nice to have the preview continuously playing while making some changes on the comp, but sometimes I would like to have a real-time preview, like the old RAM preview.

Is it possible to generate a real-time RAM preview? I don't mind waiting for AE to render before playing back the animation.

I have tried the Numpad 0 and also spacebar. I've tried to purge all, restart machine, etc...

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Andre Arruda

After Effects 2015.3 (13.8.0.144)

Mac Pro (Late 2013)

3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5

64 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC

[Szalam]

Pull your Preview panel down so you can see all of the options. Switch the preview shortcut dropdown to the Num 0 option and check to make sure it has the Cache before playback option checked. That should make it behave similar to the old RAM preview.

If you have a preview cached and it's not playing those cached frames back in real time, there's a bug.

One thing to try.

Make your timeline smaller. I'm assuming you're working on a 4K or 5K screen. Shrink your timeline panel vertically so it takes up a lot less screen space and try again.

If that doesn't help, try pressing ` to make your comp window fill the screen and try it.

If that doesn't help, try putting another panel (such as the libraries panel) underneath the timeline.

Please let us know your results.

[CreativeChef]

I only have to use After Effects once in a blue moon and just encountered this non-real time audio playback on a fully cached ram preview issue today.  (FWIW I'm on Mac 10.12.6 and AE CC 2018)  I spent quite some time Googling a solution and finally ran across the bit posted here about putting the libraries panel under the timeline.  That fixed it.  Wait. WHAT!?!?!  Are you kidding me that in 2018 After Effects cannot successfully perform a cache to ram and playback with audio in sync without the user having to do something as bizarre are rearranging the user interface?!?!? 

[StephaneA_AfterEffects]

Yes and it is since CC 2015...

Moreover the panel under the timeline doesn't really fix the bug it works sometimes and sometimes not.

[CreativeChef]

Indeed.  I spoke a tad too soon.  I now see that it takes a combination of the libraries panel and minimizing the timeline and neither is 100% reliable.  Absolutely ridiculous.

[StephaneA_AfterEffects]

The only thing that works 100% is to shrink the AE windows to above 60% of its full screen size and the Ram preview fps becomes sudenly real time all the time.

Or you can tell it this way: to make AE work on a 4k monitor you have to shrink its size to a 2k monitor size... brillant.

[arieo]

It's 2023 and this trick still works... weird...

[defaultua5yv8e7hfah]

Its 2024 and it still works. This is why adobe has lost so many content creators to other plats form. This kind of bugs are ridiculous.

[paolod78753650]

I thought this can only be a joke, but it works 😄
This is so 100% Adobe-BS-Bugfest...

[markvrolings]

This did the trick for me. Pulling the library under the timeline.

[pault34916314]

What, how, when? I thought I needed to think about retiring my most recent iMac but bloody hell, moving the libraries panel under the timeline works. That is just mad!

[andrecostabr2]

Szalam​ thanks for your reply.

It seams to be a bug indeed. The checkbox "cache Before Playback" is checked.

Putting the libraries panel under the timeline did help a lot but I'm still having some playback under real-time (27/28 out of 30fps).

Thanks for ur help!

U28D590 Display
27.5-inch (3840 x 2160)

AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB graphics

[Szalam]

So none of the other two suggestions worked, huh? Interesting.

Please, please, please file a bug report and give them as much information as you can (including what you've tried and what worked). This is one of those really persistent bugs introduced by this new architecture that the Adobe people need more help squashing.

[Zulkifar2]

I have the same problem here. Video preview was weird. Now that I'm previewing with an audio track I can definitely say that the preview is not realtime. Sometimes it doubles the frame, sometimes goes slower or faster. The audio sounds distorted and jumpy.

[Szalam]

Zulkifar2 wrote:

I have the same problem here. 

Did you try any of the things I suggested? If so, which ones and what were the results?

What exact version number of AE are you using?

What version number of your OS?

Please describe your computer hardware.

[ananggadipa]

Same here, I wonder when this would be fixed.

I'm using iMac 5K Late 2015. Latest AE & Mac as right now. Upgrading to 32GB RAM from 8GB not helping though.

Tried submit bug report but when I submit there's error messages.

[Davide Boscolo]

Still the same problem here even after the new updates. Cache Before Playback is on. Can't preview 4 seconds without distortions. I'm on a Mac Pro with SierraOS.

[Szalam]

Davide Boscolo wrote:

Still the same problem here even after the new updates. Cache Before Playback is on. Can't preview 4 seconds without distortions. I'm on a Mac Pro with SierraOS.

That's got to be really frustrating. My Mac doesn't have the issue, but that's because it's a 15-inch MacBook Pro from 2011, so I don't have a huge screen resolution. I'm sure this is a high-priority issue for the AE team at Adobe as it's affecting so many people. They've done a few things to fix the issue for some people (it's not nearly as much of an issue in the CC 2017 release as it was in the first CC 2015 release), but the main issue is still a problem it would seem.

Hopefully they are close to a proper, real fix. They know it's a widespread issue that frustrates a lot of people, but it's taking a while to nail down the underlying cause. If you haven't yet, you could file a bug report. Give them as much technical information as you can about your system and the problem you're experiencing (but try to keep emotion out of it - I know it's frustrating and they know it's frustrating, so let's  just try to get it solved )..

[PGH4LYF]

The green bar used to mean a rock-solid assurance that this cached content will play back right now. It now isn't worth the pixels it's displayed in.

[Bernhard Naether]

Hello, so now its for me also time to get into the discussion because I have the exact same issues with the RAM Preview.

What I tried and what helps to get around this:

- making the timelinewindow smaller, so its just some layers high

- moving the rendered workarea out of the timeline view

If I see the timeline in "normal" size and the rendered work area, it makes also a lot of these vertical lines which look like coming from the current time indicator.

My system is a Z800 Win10 PC with latest AE 13.8.1.38 running. AND I am working with a two 4K Monitor Setup, while Windows scales 125%.

Another "strange" behavior while RAM Preview is, that during the glitchy playback, the Disk Cache is creating a lot of workload on my Media Stripeset, which I would not really expect because it should play out of the RAM? Shouldnt it?

Maybe I also should file in a bug report...

[PerryPride]

I have a simple animation which shouldn't be any problems at all to preview but even if I cache the preview, lover my timeline, add a panel beneath it it still previews in 9-15fps with a quarter resolution. This is insane! I need to render out my animation to see it in real time! Unacceptable! My impression is that it's better to install AE 2014 and work in that. The AE CC has had this problem all along!

I using a late 2015 iMac 27" 5K Retina

4GHz Intel core i7

32GB of RAM

[ananggadipa]

for now best you can do is shrink the timeline as Szalam​ said:

Make your timeline smaller. I'm assuming you're working on a 4K or 5K screen. Shrink your timeline panel vertically so it takes up a lot less screen space and try again.

If that doesn't help, try pressing ` to make your comp window fill the screen and try it.

If that doesn't help, try putting another panel (such as the libraries panel) underneath the timeline.

The last one work for me (putting another panel underneath)

[Edward S Sanchez]

Shrinking timeline seems to improve it. But I hope someone fixes this. I'm on a 5k iMac - I shouldn't be having this problem!

[ananggadipa]

True.

[ccolbertemg]

Change the timeline to a Stacked Panel.  It should playback in realtime now.