Reducing a composition's memory requirements
Once you identify the layers that use memory-intensive features, you can employ several strategies to reduce the memory load: - Collapse transformations of nested compositions where possible. Collapsing transformations calculates the transform property changes once for all nested compositions instead of calculating at every level in the composition hierarchy. This saves memory and improves performance. This technique cannot be used if the nested composition uses a mask or effect. See Collapsing transformation properties and Maintaining image quality of nested compositions.
- Prerender nested compositions. When you render nested compositions into movies, After Effects saves the time and memory required to calculate the changes in them. See Saving time by prerendering nested compositions.
- Render compositions in draft mode. Although draft quality is not sufficient for final output, it produces a movie that is good enough for previewing your project.
- Reduce the number of changes you can undo with the Undo command by choosing Edit > Preferences > General and typing a lower number for Undo-able Actions.
- Free up RAM currently used to cache images by choosing Edit > Purge > Image Caches. You can also free up RAM currently used to store undo changes by choosing Edit > Purge > Undo.
If insufficient-memory problems persist, try the following: - On Mac OS systems, disable unnecessary system extensions. This will also improve rendering performance.
- On Mac OS systems, make sure that you have allocated the maximum amount of available RAM to After Effects.
- Estimate the amount of RAM required for the composition, and add additional RAM to your computer. You can review the contributing factors for a specific composition by selecting it, choosing Composition > Composition Settings, and then looking on both the Basic and Advanced tabs.
- When a memory error message is displayed, temporarily remove effects from the project in order to finish rendering.
Note: Although After Effects can run with RAM-extending utilities, such as RAM Doubler, use of such utilities significantly slows the application and is not recommended. The use of virtual memory on Mac OS systems is also not recommended for the same reason.
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