Hey everyone,
I'm running into a problem whenever I use multi frame rendering in the ram preview. If the machine is rendering and I don't have After Effects as the active application or whenever I stop playback of the ram preview, the cached frames are immediately deleted. I can see the green line moving forward as the image is rendered, but the second I stop the preview (or if AE is rendering in the background and I don't click back to it in time for it to begin playback) then the frames are gone and the green line disappears and I cannot scrub through the rendered frames.
If I disable multi frame rendering, then the green line and the cached frames remain in the preview window, and I can scrub through them like normal; they do not clear. Only when multi frame rendering is enabled does it disappear after render.
I know the frames are saving, because I have 32 GB set on my SSD for the disk cache (I also put them on an external HDD to test with the same results). It will fill up that 32GB of space presumably with the cached frames that disappear after render, but they are not accessible. I also have 16GB of ram, with plenty free for AE to use for caching (3GB per core = 12GB set for AE ram preview). I have not had this problem of the frames clearing until AE CC.
The only thing I can think that would be different from other times when I've not had this problem is that I'm using ProRes 422 (LT) clips in the compositions. But I don't know why they would cache normally without multiframe and then be immediately deleted with it enabled.
And no, rendering without multiframe is not an option. RAM previews take four times as long with single frame rendering, and I don't want to sit at my computer all day waiting for previews. This is extremely frusterating, as I must have AE open as the foremost program at all times. If I miss that crucial moment where the render completes and click back to the program a second late, all the frames are gone and I must rerender again! It happened twice while writing this message.
So what's the deal?
Specs:
AE CC 12.0.0.404
Retina Macbook Pro / OSX 10.8.5
2.6Ghz Core i7
16GB RAM
512 GB primary SSD (where footage & cache is located)
3TB 7200rpm cache drive