General Specialist

2006-05-30

Using more than 2GB of RAM in After Effects

If you are as RAM-frustrated as I am (I'm running a 750 frames long 2K render in 16-bit in the background right now) you'll be happy to know that you can bump up After Effects RAM-usage over the Windows XP limit of 2 GB by changing a simple command in a text file.

How to set this up is so poorly described in the AE manual that I've actually filed it as a bug. It only says:
See the Microsoft website for details.
I spent 30 minutes searching until I finally found out how to do this, which I thought I'd share with you:



The limit under Windows XP is 3 GB of RAM (that is per instance of AE, so you can easily start more than one if you have Windows XPx64, but plain XP only supports a total of 4 GB of RAM for the whole system.)
On Mac OS X AE can use up to 3.5 GB of RAM, and on 64-bit Windows XP each instance of After Effects can use up to 4GB of RAM with no special configuration.

Here's more background information for the geeky:
RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff
The /3GB switch

UPDATE: The process for Windows Vista is now described in a comment on the LiveDocs site.

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 Tuesday, May 30, 2006

36 Comments:

  • Cool tip...

    is it restricted only for AE? did u try it in NLEs? (PPro,Vegas etc)

    By Anonymous Ram, at Wednesday, July 26, 2006  

  • No, this tip should work for all apps that are "Large Address Aware" but I haven't researched other apps, I only know that After Effects and possibly Photoshop benefit from this. However, if your other apps aren't you shouldn't experience any problems, so it's pretty safe to just switch and try it out!

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Wednesday, July 26, 2006  

  • Would this work on a Windows 2003 Server OS with 4GB of RAM using the /4GB switch?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Thursday, July 27, 2006  

  • The links in the original post suggest that it should work with the "/3GB" (not "/4GB") on Windows 2003 Server, but I can only vouch for After Effects.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Thursday, July 27, 2006  

  • Hi there I recenlty had my HP workstation upgraded form 2 to 3 GB of RAM and noticed in the render que that it was only processing the render with the original 2GB, so after hunting on-line I found your video tutorial on how to ammend this, which seemed to work a treat. Unfortunatley though every time I tried to capture from our digi deck into my Avid Adrenaline Media composer it kept crashing early into the capture and gave an unknown error message, after trying all my usual tricks I was still not able to capture so I went back and deleted the text from the Boot command and it captured no problem??? Any ideas as to how I can get round this? Many thanks LSH

    By Blogger LSH, at Monday, August 07, 2006  

  • Unfortunately, it seems that Avid in their infinite software wisdom hasn't made their app "Large Address Aware," so I guess you're out of luck if you have to run really memory-intensive projects on the same machine as your NLE. Sorry...

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Tuesday, August 15, 2006  

  • I came across, and since I just bought 2 more GB,s ram, plus the 1,
    that was in there, I would give this a try. When I follow the instructions, after booting the first time, everything is fine.
    When it comes times to reboot again, my system will not boot. I have to go to safemode, and take that /3GB, back out.
    Any suggestions? System is
    Media center 2005, latest everything. 3Gb ram.

    By Anonymous rod jare, at Tuesday, August 15, 2006  

  • When I go to close and save the boot.ini file, I get an error message that reads "Cannot create the c:\boot.ini file. Make sure that the path and filename are correct". Any suggestions?

    By Blogger PhilW, at Tuesday, August 15, 2006  

  • This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Saturday, August 19, 2006  

  • To "rod jare":
    I imagine the problem you're having comes from the fact that you're trying to do this with MCE, since none of the Microsoft documents I linked to in the original post lists Media Center Edition 2005 as supporting this feature.

    Note that the "/3GB" switch only makes it possible for certain applications (that have been programmed to do so) to use more than 2 GB of RAM for a single application. You can still use more than 2 GB without this switch and start several programs.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Saturday, August 19, 2006  

  • To "philw":

    Either you have Windows XP installed to a different disk than C:, or more likely, you are not logged in with Administrator priviliges. Also, locate the "boot.ini" file (you may have to turn on "Show Hidden Files" in your windows' settings, and make sure the file isn't "Read Only."

    Good luck!

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Saturday, August 19, 2006  

  • thanks jonas, I figured it was an MCE thing,

    By Anonymous rod jare, at Tuesday, August 22, 2006  

  • Very Very helpful! I was searching for the answer on after effects help but, not much information there as you said...

    Thanks a lot!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, April 06, 2007  

  • After getting excited that I could use all 3GB of ram for rendering with AE, I ended up on the Microsoft website researching why I kept getting the blue screen of death, and why my drivers for my video card kept disappearing. Read what I found, what are the odds:

    "On Windows XP, some drivers, especially VIDEO ADAPTER DRIVERS with onboard RAM, CANNOT run with the /3GB parameter because they require more address space than the 1 GB kernel address space permits."

    That sucks!

    By Blogger Brad, at Tuesday, May 08, 2007  

  • Unless you are having out-of-memory errors with really big renders, I'd really recommend starting multiple instances of AE (or using "Nucleo" or upgrading to AE CS3) instead of using the /3GB switch.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Tuesday, May 08, 2007  

  • Hi,
    I do nto see how to find Edit/ Preferences to check that box in WinXP as it is shown in the video clip. Please advice.
    Thanks

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, May 11, 2007  

  • Hi,

    I have the option /3GB in my boot.ini file and I have 4GB RAM on Windows XP. How we can monitor the RAM above 3GB - it doesn't show in the Task Manager or in any other Memory Optimization software.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, May 11, 2007  

  • The /3GB switch only affects programs that are PAE aware. If your Windows XP can't see all the RAM you have installed, neither will any programs see the additional RAM, so you need to solve that error first. I'd really recommend starting multiple instances of AE (or using "Nucleo" or upgrading to AE CS3) instead of using the /3GB switch.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Sunday, May 13, 2007  

  • If you can't see the checkbox, do you really have more than 2GB of RAM installed (and visible to your OS?)

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Sunday, May 13, 2007  

  • any info on how to solve this issue in vista? i got 4GB ram.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Wednesday, June 27, 2007  

  • Jonas,
    just upgraded to AE cs3 xp pro, 4gb ram, dual xenon supermicro here. With /3gb switch activated, photoshop cs2 shows over 2gb memory, but AE never has, either AE7 or now cs3. If photoshop can see it, why would you think AE can not? Quite puzzling here. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Thursday, August 02, 2007  

  • Photoshop has its own RAM scheme that is quite different than any other software.

    In AE, you can see the amount of RAM that AE sees either in the splash screen at startup, or in the Render Queue (see the illustration to the blog post.) If you just look in the Task Manager, you will only see the RAM that AE currently has allocated.

    With AE CS3, you are probably better off using the Multiprocessing feature than to try to use the /3GB switch, since the /3GB switch is known to cause instability with a lot of drivers.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Wednesday, August 15, 2007  

  • "Video tutorial on using more than 2 GB of RAM with After Effects on Windows XP"

    DO NOT USE THIS, IT DESTROYED MY OS!!
    ASSHOLE!!!!!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Monday, October 08, 2007  

  • Dear "anonymous,"

    Sorry you're having problems, but this Microsoft-provided switch is easily reverted by starting in safe mode (hold down F8 while booting) and removing it. Most likely you have a old/incompatible driver on your system that can't handle the switch, but it shouldn't "DESTROY" your OS.

    Best regards,
    A. Hole

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Monday, October 08, 2007  

  • das it work with XP media centre?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, November 09, 2007  

  • God Bless you sweet man!
    I use AE a lot and i had started to name the grey hairs that i had begun to get after the adobe programmers. Now it's working fine!

    Cheers

    By Anonymous jk, at Sunday, November 11, 2007  

  • nice 1, big help.

    Anonymous: bet your techie friends avoid helping you like the plague? ;)

    Peace.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Monday, November 26, 2007  

  • Hey, I also get the message: "Cannot create the c:\boot.ini file. Make sure that the path and filename are correct". I am an administrator, I have selected "show hidden files", but still it doesn't show up in explorer.

    By Blogger Martin Løland, at Tuesday, February 12, 2008  

  • Martin,

    Are you sure you have a C disk and that you have write permissions on the root folder and on the boot.ini file?

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Tuesday, February 12, 2008  

  • A million thank yous! This simple tip worked like a charm. Jonas is the MAN!!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, February 15, 2008  

  • hi, i just wanna ask, how 'bout using windows vista? How do I change the setting? THx

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Tuesday, April 08, 2008  

  • I just updated the post with a link to the manula where someone has posted the steps for Vista.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Tuesday, April 08, 2008  

  • wow thx dude,
    I'm gonna do the manual hehe ^___^

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Tuesday, April 08, 2008  

  • Yessssss!!!! Man you Rockk!!!
    I tryed de AE Help, the microsoft website to do this , and last I googleit and found this great post!!! Now is all Happiness!!! Thank you thank you a lot

    By Blogger Halex, at Monday, July 21, 2008  

  • To allow for edit of boot.ini for those getting the error take the following steps.

    Open Windows Explorer
    Tools>Folder Options>View>
    Uncheck 'Hide protected operating system files'
    Select OK and return to folder view
    Right-Click boot.ini
    Properties
    Uncheck 'Read Only'

    Cheers

    Cheds

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Saturday, August 09, 2008  

  • Thank you!!! The video tutorial was great. Just what I needed.

    Erik W

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Sunday, August 17, 2008  

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