Hi guys,

I am havng issues regarding the composition preview playback fps in After Effects. I am still at the initial stages of getting to grips with all this and am messing about with a 3 mnute clip I captured using Movie Studio.

I import this AVI clip into AE and drag it to the composition panel and when I preview it I get a fps = 15(not realtime). I have tried all the performance tweaks suggested by the help files but I can't get it to play realtime. I've lowered the res of the clip and the quality but it will not budge.

Now I'm beginning to think its hardware deficiencies as I have a Intel Centrino based laptop running only 512MB RAM. It does have the Nvidia GeForce GO chipset onboard too.

However, I dropped in a DivX encoded movie of a far greater sizse in terms of filesize and add this to the composotion panel and hey presto - I get a smooth 25 fps(realtime).

The main difference as far as I can tell is in the sizes of the frames within the clips. The RAW AVI captured by me is 720x576 pixels and the DivX movie is half that. Is this the main reason?

Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

AE is not a realtime editor, though it is capable of importing many different file types it does not necessarily treat them as video, more like a bunch of colours and pixels. The data rate of the DivX is quite low which will help with playback.

Reduce the playback quality to 50% or use ram preveiw, this will mean some rendering is required.

You are right about the hardware, but if it works (however slowly) then fine just be patient.

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Edius Pro, ADVC300