Using dynamic RAM previews

When your project includes compositing and complex video effects, you may not be able to preview your project at its full frame rate.

If you prefer not to prerender your project, you can dedicate a portion of your RAM to cache video frames that cannot be rendered in real time.

Setting up your cache

1. From the Options menu, choose Preferences and select the Video tab.

2. Enter a value in the Dynamic RAM preview (max) box to set the amount of RAM that you want to dedicate to video previews.

   NOTE The maximum size of the RAM cache is displayed to the right of the control. If you reserve excessive amounts of RAM for your RAM cache, performance may decrease.

3. Click OK.

Building the preview from a selection

1. Select the region that contains the frames you want to cache.

2. From the Tools menu, choose Build Dynamic RAM Preview (or press Shift+B). Each frame in the selection is rendered.

   NOTE Click anywhere in the timeline to cancel.

3. After rendering is finished, click Play . The cached video will play back at the frame rate specified on the Video tab of the Project Properties dialog.

   NOTE If your RAM cache is not large enough to contain the entire selection, the selection is automatically adjusted to include only the cached region. You can increase the Dynamic RAM Preview max setting on the Video tab of the Preferences dialog to increase the size of the cache.

Clearing dynamic RAM preview

During the course of your work in a project, you may have a significant amount of system RAM devoted to the Dynamic RAM Preview function. Whether you’ve purposely loaded frames into your RAM by manually building a dynamic RAM preview section or frames have been loaded in automatically, you may find times when you want to clear all frames from this function.

• In the main menu, choose Tools | Clear Dynamic RAM Preview.

This flushes all frames from your RAM and frees that memory for other uses.