Forcing AE to use all of my RAM?

[Eric Kome]

Using AE7, and just upgraded from 2 GB RAM to 6 GB RAM. however, i notice when i'm making movie (rendering), many times, in the stats area, it says for example, "RAM: 18% used of 3.0 GB".

sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower. my question is, can AE utilize more than 3GB RAM, and either way, can i force it to use closer to 100% of that 3GB.

i upped the numbers in the "memory/Cache" preferences, but maybe not high enough?

thanks!

[Liam Carlin]

Eric im not on AE as we speak but i think it is the memory cache preferance that you change. just knock it up a little and see what happens. mine says 60% of 1024 when it renders.

as i only have a gig. i like the sound of 6 gig. let me know if works or not. also if i am using another program i get a lower usage of ram when rendering.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Windows XP allots 2 GB of RAM for applications, and the rest for the OS kernel. You can increase the memory allotted for applications to 3 GB by the use of the /3GB switch in boot.ini. See this Microsoft Knowledgebase article. While it is in reference to Windows Server 2003 it will work for Windows XP; just ignore the /USERVA switch.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Just did a quick search and found some more information on this subject. See this blog post, which among other things has a link to a short but very helpful video tutorial on how to set up Windows XP and After Effects to use more than 2 GB of RAM. Note also that if you are running the Windows XP 64 bit edition After Effects can use up to 4 GB of RAM with no special configuration required.

[Marco Wagner]

Originally Posted by Christopher Lefchik

Just did a quick search and found some more information on this subject. See this blog post, which among other things has a link to a short but very helpful video tutorial on how to set up Windows XP and After Effects to use more than 2 GB of RAM. Note also that if you are running the Window XP 64 bit edition After Effects can use up to 4 GB of RAM with no special configuration required.

Totally correct, it is 64bit XP or Vista that will utlize 4GB+ natively.

[Eric Kome]

i didn't mention i'm on a mac G5 quad.

for the most part, i'm not sure bumping RAM made THAT big of a difference. i did find that if i pumped the ram in the preferences panel (memory/cache) i started having errors saying "unable to process 1280 x 720 graphics" or some such thing. found some links on line that says to set the memory panel back to default, which cleared up the error, but still not getting much out of the extra ram..

e.

[Michael Behr]

id say look thu all the after effects settings. i havnt been there in a while but i found the hardware accelerated rendering while i was in there last. it may be somewhere in there.

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by Eric Kome

Using AE7, and just upgraded from 2 GB RAM to 6 GB RAM. however, i notice when i'm making movie (rendering), many times, in the stats area, it says for example, "RAM: 18% used of 3.0 GB".

sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower. my question is, can AE utilize more than 3GB RAM, and either way, can i force it to use closer to 100% of that 3GB.

i upped the numbers in the "memory/Cache" preferences, but maybe not high enough?

thanks!

If After Effects is using 18% of the 3.0 GB it recognizes, why would you want it to use more ?

If it needs to use more it will use more (up to the 3.0 GB it recognizes as available)

If you find out your internet browser is only using 43 Mb would you search for ways to force it to use - for instance - 500 Mb ?

[Brad Richmond]

Try this:

http://www.gridironsoftware.com/Products/

You probably don't need the Pro version (it's over $300 bucks), the Gridiron Nucleo might be enough, and it's only $49 bucks (I paid $149, then two weeks later they dropped the price...oh well)

You can try it out first for free. It really does speed up rendering on my Dual G4.

Have fun!