Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual page 43

Because antivirus software operates by monitoring every read and write operation, such software can decrease
rendering speed, especially with the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously preference selected.
If the rendering of a single frame requires more RAM than is available to the individual background processes, then
After Effects will not render multiple frames simultaneously and will instead use only the main foreground process
to render all frames for that composition. If After Effects can't use background processes to render multiple frames
simultaneously, a message appears in the Info panel.
Note: After Effects can also use multiple processes to accelerate rendering of a single frame. This form of multiprocessing
can take advantage of hyper-threading. The number of CPUs that After Effects reports in the Multiprocessing Preferences
dialog box for accelerating rendering within a single frame counts the virtual (logical) CPUs available due to hyper-
threading.
Improve performance
You can improve performance by optimizing your computer system, After Effects, your project, and your workflow.
Improve performance before starting After Effects
• Make sure that you've installed the current version of After Effects, including any available updates. For more
information about updates, visit the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/learn_downloads.
• Make sure that you've installed the latest versions of drivers and plug-ins, especially video card drivers. To
download updates for drivers and plug-ins, visit the provider's website.
• Quit applications that are not necessary for your work. This may include some applications that start automatically
when the operating system starts.
• Make sure that your system includes a display card that supports OpenGL 2.0 or later (Windows) or OpenGL 1.5
or later (Mac OS). Though After Effects can function without it, OpenGL accelerates various types of rendering,
including rendering to the screen for previews. See "Render with OpenGL" on page 587.
• Adjust the size of the virtual memory paging file (Windows only). Virtual memory enables the system to use hard-
disk space to store information normally stored in RAM. Windows manages virtual memory using a paging file.
To improve performance in After Effects, adjust the size of the paging file to a maximum of twice the amount of
installed RAM—the default in Windows XP. (See Windows Help.)
• Defragment all hard disks regularly. See the documentation for your operating system for details.
• Make sure that your system has enough RAM. See the documentation for your operating system and computer
for details on how to check the amount of installed RAM and how to install RAM.
• Stop or pause resource-intensive operations in other applications, such as video previews in Adobe Bridge.
Improve performance by optimizing memory, cache, and multiprocessing settings
• Use multiple processors to render multiple frames simultaneously by selecting the Render Multiple Frames Simul-
taneously preference. See "Render multiple frames simultaneously" on page 36.
• Enable caching frames to disk by selecting the Enable Disk Cache preference.
• Set the Maximum RAM Cache Size preference to an optimum value. See "Memory & Cache preferences" on
page 35.
• Purge RAM and disk caches (choose Edit > Purge > Image Caches).
AFTER EFFECTS CS3 37
User Guide