Adobe After Effects has every tool needed to create an amazing animated or motion graphics piece. Unfortunately, even the best of programs might give you some issues. Most projects created with After Effects are large files, and therefore, tend to slow down the program and your computer. This means your projects might take longer than expected to complete and will result in an overall slower productivity rate. Luckily, there a few things you can do to help minimize the time and make the process more seamless, such as understanding RAM using and composition settings.
Here are a few tips that will help you keep the memory and storage working more efficiently in After Effects:
Allocate more RAM in After Effects
Ram preview in After Effects uses your computer’s RAM to store rendered information and holds it until your next render. This takes up a lot of room on your device and can slow down your processing. The best way to avoid this is to free up your RAM and purge the RAM previews. Under the “edit” menu, there is a “purge” menu that you can use to either purge all of the memory at once, or you can choose specific areas to purge such as “Image Caches” and “Video Memory”
Collect files
If you need to share a project with another designer or move it to another computer, you will need to gather all of the assets. Under the file menu you will see the dependencies menu, then there is the option to Collect the files. When you click on “collect files” After Effects creates a folder with the project file and all of its assets. This collects the project in one spot making it easier to share.
Composition settings
The most widely used aspect ratio for videos is 16:9 ratio, but in some cases such as digital signage, banners and email blasts you might need to make a custom canvas size. Under the composition menu, there is an option for composition settings where you can change the pixel height and width. There you can also change the frame rate and the length of the composition.