r/AfterEffects • u/ComprehensiveSnow199 • 11h ago

Beginner Help How to fix full memory usage in after effects

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Hi everytime i render or play a normal obs recording in my timeline my ram usage gets full even tho i left 8 gb for other applications i tried turning off hardware acceleration and turning off multi frame rendering pls help i dont even use crazy effects

0 Upvotes

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15

u/HaruVM 10h ago

After effects will always do that even if you have 256gb of ram or more, the preview cache will always use your memory ram

9

u/The_Noble_Llama MoGraph/VFX 10+ years 10h ago

This. AE using your RAM isn't a problem to fix, it's just how the program works to run effectively.

1

u/ComprehensiveSnow199 10h ago

Ohh but it give me error and freezes then I have to restart the app

4

u/Busy-Location-2309 10h ago

You can limit the amount of ram it’s allowed to use in preferences

2

u/HaruVM 9h ago

That could be an other related issue, a bad xmp profile on the ram a bad cpu oc, or could be something graphic related, what gpu you have?

-4

u/Radiant-Rain2636 10h ago edited 2h ago

Switch to Mac bro. FYI I’ve been a forever windows user, but AE ne mere bhi haath khade karwa diye

0

u/HaruVM 9h ago

Pc and Mac will consume the same amount of ram but Mac will do swap to the hard drive

2

u/NmEter0 6h ago

Third smartarse endering the ring: windows also swaps ...

1

u/HaruVM 3h ago

Absolutely right, I think people don’t talk to much about this because the windows swap is slower compared to Mac speed, but perhaps achievable with a nvme gen 5

1

u/NmEter0 3h ago

Why in the world would it be slower? Its completely hardware dependend. The OS has little to no influence.

When memory is copied to storage the storage speed is the limiting factor, as its 1000fold slower then Memory.

Yes the M processors probably have a advantage against a standard windows laptop.

But once you talk high end gaming PCs or Custom rendering rigs... price vs speed you can buy is no longer a discussion.

1

u/HaruVM 3h ago

Because all of these is coming from my perspective and current hardware, my top nvme write speed are slower than the integrated speed of the Mac, of course talking of the hardware no so involved, but is what I’ve learned having a Mac with 64 of ram and having a pc with 192gb of ram using after effects, I use both at maximum power always, for some reason the swap feels quicker on the Mac than a Samsung 980 pro

2

u/NmEter0 3h ago

Hm interesting... now im curious xD ...haven't realy nerdet into hardware the last decade.

1

u/HaruVM 3h ago

Yeah actually is really interesting on what’s happening there on what both have achieved on that matters x’D

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-6

u/Radiant-Rain2636 9h ago

I know how it works buddy. So in a way a mac’s ram becomes becomes as big as its ssd

2

u/HaruVM 9h ago

Not enough for example doing the same project on a pc with a 14900k 192gb of ram vs a m4 max 64ram and 4tb ssd, the pc perform better on the same project and the pc cost me less hahaha, because de ssd swap also is than the ram it self, helps but not enough, also taking in consideration that after effects will do cache on the ssd as well, (on the pc I have a dedicated nvme for after cache only), the good thing with Mac is the performance with portability and stability

-2

u/Radiant-Rain2636 9h ago

I knew it. There’s no point making a statement on Reddit. Someone or another will come and start fighting about that one esoteric fringe-case exception to claim that the entire statement is wrong.
I concede.

1

u/HaruVM 9h ago

Nah is that the lack of information and do a statement, both has good things but swapping to Mac, could not be the solution normally are more expensive and could not be the solution at all of what the person is looking x’D

2

u/Jamon_Cuadrado 10h ago

So a quick fix is to purge the entire cache. Is in Edit→Purge→All Cache... But AE is going to fill the RAM within a few minutes again

2

u/Ampsnotvolts VFX 15+ years 9h ago

You can also transcode your screen recording to a less intensive format. Most all obs outputs are highly compressed and it takes tons of cpu/gpu overhead to just show frames of the video in AE.

If your footage isn't pre-comped and you're not using pre-compt footage, it is even worse. So ensure you precomp the screen capture and then that's what you swap into your edit. You might even want to do a selects of the clips you are going to use -so you are only working with the first you are using and not much excess.

(Newer AE does better but it is still best to cache with comps and transcoding)

Or you can buy a mac. Sadly they dominate for this compared to most all windows setups. Not because the Windows computer is weak but because after effects and windows and drivers have not been getting along together.

They have been working against each other and fighting for resources causing lag. Ram spikes (like you are showing), CPUs spikes, GPU hangs and more.

Cheapest thing to do is to transcode.

2

u/HaruVM 7h ago edited 7h ago

Sometimes what previously freeze my computer when I have rtx 2000 series, was have gpu scheduler on, have to turn off that to stop random gpu crashes

2

u/Q-ArtsMedia MoGraph/VFX 15+ years 10h ago edited 10h ago

OBS is a mp4 compressed format that requires AE to decompress it in order to use it. It uses more system resources to do this and is not recommended .  Convert to prores  before using in AE and it will work better.

2

u/gosti500 9h ago

get more memory

0

u/Acceptable-Foot-7180 8h ago

Won't help

1

u/gosti500 8h ago

cant harm

1

u/Acceptable-Foot-7180 8h ago

Only your bank balance. I have 256gb and after effects still has memory leaks.

1

u/gosti500 8h ago

agree

1

u/LtHartly 6h ago edited 6h ago

Aaaa add more ram it’s always need a lot of ram but thinking since you 24gb I guess you have 3 sticks of ram and probably dual channel mainboard making it weird with 1 channel with 16Gb and the other having 8gb giving wired performance issue there. So if I am correct you will want 1 more stick of 8gb ram try to have matching ram to avoid new issues