Render before playback

[jerry5353]

Hey guys.

I have a question that might be super simple:

I recall on one of the computers I was working at (I freelance so I touch multiple computers a week) on one of them the work area of after effects was rendering automatically before I started previewing it.

How is it set up to work that way?

I have a new project which is a live event with many moving parts (total of 28 or 15 layers active at any given time) and I have to change out layers on the fly while playback is going on, but if there is a way that it can be utilizing the memory to render frames ahead of the frames I'm previewing, this would be an insanely helpful way to operate.

[Vinay Dwivedi]

Hi Jerry,

I think you should try and check the option "Cache Before Playback" in After Effects which is available under Preview panel and check if that helps.

//Vinay

[jerry5353]

Nice. Thank you.

I tried your advice but it doesn't seem to cache unless the playhead is on the frame that needs to be cached.

I tried playing with the settings but nothing really changed so I tried saving the settings then closing the program and reopening it. Still nothing...

[Vinay Dwivedi]

Hi Jerry,

Please send me the screenshot of your Preview panel and the Timeline.

Also, let me know the system information like OS, RAM and Hard drive.

//Vinay

[jerry5353]

Thanks so much for your time and help. See the images below for reference.

Essentially it is a live draft/selection process (this is only a reference to see if I can make this work) There's 14 boxes they can choose from and 14 teams. Layer 1 in this example is a full screen video that plays which allows me to turn on/off/replace the layers I need to once the selection is made. It can be looped and the full screen video can be replaced also.

The issue is, there needs to be 14 layers for boxes and 14 layers to show if the box is occupied/drafted or not and by whom. Naturally if this was all stills it would be super simple and works fine, but the client wants to know how it can work with video. In the example below, I have the still layers in 3D with an animated camera, though I also tried a null layer and moving the stills in 2D space and got about the same results on playback.

[jerry5353]

Mac - Sierra

Ram is 64 GB (though we would prefer to be able to get this to work on 16GB or 8GB if possible, but we need it to work first then we can worry about what hardware we need)

[Vinay Dwivedi]

Uncheck the first option under "On (Spacebar) Stop"

This will allow caching as soon as you open the timeline or the respective comp.

//Vinay

[jerry5353]

Ah, trying it now, thanks again for your help with this.

So that does help but it only caches if I am playing on the current timeline. is there a way for it to cache automatically without even playing?

[jerry5353]

So I'm definitely getting closer thanks to your help.

I think the solution is...having a 64GB memory machine on site...HAHAHA. Of course, I guess I was just asking for too much.

So replacing still images over a looping background (28 total) is easy enough and it only stutters just a touch once it's dragged and dropped. hopefully I can figure out a way to disguise that, maybe find a moment in the video without much movement and do it then.

Overall, you helped a ton and I am very grateful.

Thanks.