I have a (cs4) project with some very long (9600x1508) image files.

I am basically simulating a film strip going through a projector (without the projector)
You can see the film strip moving one frame at a time, so you can view the entire strip, picture, optical track, scratches and all.

I scanned sections of this film on a flatbed scanner and put them together in compositions of 3 of these files.

All through syncing them together and key framing them ( I connected each pre-comp to a null object to sort of pull them through) I left the preview quality on half or something low, and spliced them all together nicely.

Now on full quality, it seems that after effects never draws the second or third scanned section in any given pre-comp. Also It fails to render every time, telling me that there isn't enough ram or cache to render a 2000x27000 image.

Here are my questions

1. this is a limitation of my computer (and possibly settings), not of after effects itself right? I am working with a pretty small amount of ram for this kind of work, and AE in general (2 gigs).

2. Assuming it is my computer, what can I try to get this to render, without completely reorganizing my composition workflow?

3. Might I have better luck with cs5?

Thanks

Maybe you have this covered:
2GB is way too less to handle with the kind of resolution you are dealing with. What file type is it? TIFF, TGA, DPX, JPEG? Compressed or uncompressed? Also, why are you trying to render out a 2000x27000 image? What is your project size and delivery format? What format are you rendering to? What is your PC configuration and how many drives do you have? Have you cleaned the buffer/RAM before rendering? Is any other program open?

Anyway, to answer your second question, it's not a case of CS4 vs CS5. You need more RAM if you HAVE to work with these resolutions. However, one way to handle it is to use Photoshop to crop your images to manageable sizes that AE can easily work with. I have worked with 4K uncompressed images in AE CS3 with 3GB without issues.

If you can provide me with some more info I might be able to offer you a specific solution. Hope this helps you get started.

the actual video I am rendering is 1920x1080, i was just trying to do a test render. Some of the pre-comps I am working with are three TIFFs strung together equaling 2000x27000. (set to close to full resolution, so only one small section is in the frame at once). So the problem seems to be that it can't render all the elements of the precomp, even though the other elements are no longer in frame.

I don't really know much about setting up my cache drives, and I messed around with and read about the ram usage slider, and the ram allocation to "other programs", but I don't really know what I am doing with that either.

I do have a few hard drives, but I don't really use them properly for cache, I am sure.

The only solution (while keeping full quality and if you want your images to be at the same resolution) is to crop your images down to manageable sizes and then comp them.

But if I were to have more ram, you think this would be possible, correct?

AE has to create an image with that many pixels, and hold it in memory while working on the rest of the render. At some point the bitmap it's got in RAM can grow too large. IIRC AE is still 32-bit in CS5, so more ram may not help you. I've gotten into this same trouble pre-comping large-ish digital photos at full-res.

I'd chop your filmstrip back into individual frames, and animate their movement individually as you advance the 'strip.' Or you could parent the frames together to they'll move with a single animated transform.

But if I were to have more ram, you think this would be possible, correct?

Yeah, but how much? Since I don't have details of your operation it would be tough to even guess. A very 'rough' rule I read somewhere once (not completely true) is to have 1GB for 1k, 2GB for 2K, 4GB for 4K and so on. Yours would be 27GB! I don't think you need that much RAM! Also, you need a 64-bit OS to make use of more than 3GB anyway.

Let me put it this way: Any machine you buy will seem slow when you pile on the load. That is why there are workarounds - not only do they make the work faster and more manageable, but also saves money.