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Setting preview options


    After Effects provides four options for previewing your animations: RAM preview, standard preview, manual preview, and wireframe preview. You can access RAM, standard, and manual previews using the Time Controls palette. Access wireframe preview from the Composition > Preview menu.

    Illustration with these callouts: A. First Frame B. Frame Reverse C. Play D. Frame Advance E. Last Frame F. Audio G. Loop H. RAM Preview I. Jog control J. Time indicator K. Shuttle control
    A. First Frame B. Frame Reverse C. Play D. Frame Advance E. Last Frame F. Audio G. Loop H. RAM Preview I. Jog control J. Time indicator K. Shuttle control

    The preview options represent different balances between preview quality and speed:

    RAM preview

    This option plays a preview of the frames (including audio) at the frame rate of your composition or as fast as your system allows. Use RAM preview to preview the footage in the Timeline, Layer, or Footage windows.The number of frames previewed depends on the amount of available contiguous RAM allocated to the application. After Effects displays the total number of frames requested for the preview and the number it can render.

    You have two choices of RAM preview settings: RAM Preview and Shift+RAM Preview. Each provides different options. In the Timeline, RAM preview previews only the span of time you specify as the work area. In the Layer and Footage windows, RAM preview previews only untrimmed footage. Before you preview the Timeline, check which frames are designated as the work area. See Setting up a work area. Before you preview the Layer or Footage windows, check to see that footage you may want to preview has not been trimmed.

    Audio plays only for layers in which the Audio switch is on. To preview audio alone, see Previewing audio.

    Standard preview

    This option provides a preview of all frames in your composition. When you use this option, After Effects displays every frame as quickly as it can using the current settings of the layer switches, composition switches, and composition resolution. This preview generally plays slower than real time.

    Manual preview

    Using the shuttle control, the jog control, and the current time indicator, you can manually navigate through a composition, layer, or footage file. The current time indicator shows the position of a frame relative to the beginning and end of a composition, layer, or footage file. Because the current time indicator travels only a fixed distance in the Time Controls palette, it is less precise with long compositions.

    Wireframe preview

    This option displays a preview of the frames for all layers in your active workspace. Each layer is represented by a rectangle or, if a still-image layer has a mask or an alpha channel created in another program, by the outline of the mask or alpha channel.

    You can also use the Motion with Trails preview, which preserves the outline of each frame of each selected layer so that you can see an outline trail for every frame. See the procedure "To use the wireframe preview" in Previewing animation for information on using the Motion with Trails preview.