"RAM used has been extended for previews. Adjust RAM settings in Preference> Memory & Performance."

[Lee A. Jackson]

I'm trying to use edit a video in After Effects that I downloaded from Adobe Stock. It has a green screen and I'm trying to do motion tracking, but keep getting the following error message, "RAM used has been extended for previews. Adjust RAM settings in Preference> Memory & Performance." I did everything it said to no avail. I purged 'All Memory & Disk Cache' as well. I also created more available space on my computer by offloading apps to an external hard drive and I'm still getting the error message. No other apps are in use at the time of using After Effects. I just keep getting the error message and seeing this green flicker and glitch when previewing my work. It's stuck on 2 frames and won't preview further.

I'm running After Effects 22.6 on a Macbook Pro, Mac OS Monterey 12.5..1, M1 chip, with 8GB of memory.

[Rick Gerard]

8 GB of ram is half the minimum system requirements. Open Preferences/Memory and Performance, and select 4 GB for other applications. Close all other applications that you have open, then try motion tracking again.

Camera Tracker may work. Mocha AE, which is an excellent planer (surface) tracker, and the Track Motion (feature tracker) should all work now.

[Pinguinoverde]

Hello Rick,

You are not right in this one, listen to the users, maybe. Having gone through this for years and now in 2024 I am having the same issue with a 64GB and not using other application or browsers on the background.

No wonder why everyone is migrating to DaVinci Resolve, absolutely discouraging.

[unmesh.pansare]

Hi @Pinguinoverde this issue and the resolution has been neatly explained in this youtube video - this worked for me! https://youtu.be/xF6-zeP4Npw?si=ZbOMaHCxQzumeztW

[Pinguinoverde]

Hi, You have been posting that answer since December 2022, no, it does not work even following the instructions. Maybe it does for people animating a square for a children's video. But not for rotoscoping, 4K, Mocha AE, Tracking, simple or advanced 3d comps, and mid to high-end footage. I have even purged cache every 8 to 10 minutes, and guess...

Thanks though, but please know this method does not solve this, even if followed.

Cheers.

[Joost van der Hoeven]

8 GB of RAM is not enough for Ae. Sorry.

[Afroon2436345368ci]

Well im facing the same issue with 64GB of RAM ... now what?

[ShiveringCactus · Accepted solution]

holyguacajoley a little lower down suggests that downgrading to 22.5 has solved the issue for them.  There's obviously something / bug going on here as lots of people are commenting - I suspect the original poster's issue was indeed caused by RAM but given the other replies here, I'd say downgrading for now might be your best option.

[miasmedien]

I can confirm that. Downgraded to 22.5.0 (Build 53). No more trouble so far.

[P.M.B]

Also try disabling Multiframe Rendering.  I've found when using effects that don't support it, it causes slowdown and instability.

[Ousama AlRefai]

I have the same problim right now and the RAMs is 16 GB DDR4 !!!

Please help me, If I Upgrade my RAMs to 32 GB, Could that solving the problem ?

[holyguacajoley]

I have 32GB of RAM and I'm getting the same issue when I wasn't getting this issue a month ago. I was able to work with Premiere and AE just fine but as of late, this "RAM has been extended for previews" has been popping up constantly even at 1/4 playback. 

[Ousama AlRefai]

When I Upgrade my RAM to 40 GB, the problem happened less.

[nubnubbud]

yeah, AE is just abysmal. it throws everything into RAM in the most naive, brutish way it can, and only plays back from there after processing every pixel.
TL;DR, People who love AE enough won't tell you that AE doesn't get better with more cores, or a better GPU. the only things that matter are single core processing (focused on clock speed) and RAM, with, from my experience, 1 gig per frame of playback, about, if you intend to work in 4k. You can get a better computer, but from https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-editing-workstations/adobe-after-effects/hardware-recom... system integrators mouths, 40gb will get you about 10 seconds of playback of a single piece of footage.
"After Effects used to make great use of high core count systems (including dual Xeon) but starting with AE CC 2015 most tasks no longer benefit from having a high number of CPU cores. This is largely due to the fact that Adobe removed the “render multiple frames simultaneously” feature in part due to the fact that they are starting to integrate GPU acceleration. While it used to be that more cores = faster, since higher core count CPUs run at a lower speed a CPU with around 8 cores will be faster than a higher core count CPU or even a dual CPU setup. Multi-frame rendering brought some of this back, but from our test data it doesn’t scale well enough for a dual CPU workstation to give an advantage over a single, high core count CPU."

[emmeixon]

I have 64GB of RAM and I am getting the same issue 😕 

[unmesh.pansare]

The solution is explained neatly in this video: https://youtu.be/xF6-zeP4Npw

[Dawid26312994cvuu]

I have the same problem. Before that, everything was working. 

[Puck1984]

Any luck? I've the same exact problem

[holyguacajoley]

I've downgraded to 22.5 0 (Build 53) after reading that this could be a fix, and so far playback has been great. Anyone know how we can expidite this bug so they can troubleshoot the current version? 

[fady201214]

I have the same issue with 32GB RAM !!!!!

[unmesh.pansare]

The solution to this problem is very clearly explained in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF6-zeP4Npw 

It explains a few options and also how to downgrade which is what has worked best.

[Fraa21]

Same issue with 64GB of RAM, won't even preview a shape layer moving from left to right! What is going on?

[unmesh.pansare]

The solution to this problem is very clearly explained in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF6-zeP4Npw 

It explains a few options and also how to downgrade which is what has worked best.

[Gokul5D85]

I am also facing the same proble. My device is 'Macbook pro - M1 processor (16 GB RAM)'.

[Ousama AlRefai]

The only temporary solution is restart After Effects or maybe restart the computer and try again !!