Project Optimization

Project Optimization

Finally, to fi nish Section I of this book, here’s a clean sweep
of preferences, memory management settings, and what
do to if After Effects crashes.

Setting Preferences and Project Settings

The preference defaults have changed in version CS4 and
you may be happy with most of them. Here, however, are
a few you might want to adjust that haven’t been mentioned
yet:
. Preferences > General > Levels of Undo: The default is
32, which may be geared toward a system with less RAM
than yours. Setting it to the maximum value of 99 won’t
bring the application to a grinding halt, but it may
shorten the amount of time available in RAM Previews.
. Preferences General: Check the options Allow Scripts
to Write Files and Access Network to use some of the
scripts included with this book. Most advanced users
also prefer Default Spatial Interpolation to Linear
(Chapter 2).
. Preferences > Display: I tend to check all three boxes; I
don’t need to wait for thumbnails to update from some
network location each time I select a source fi le, I like
to see rendering progress even though it costs processing
time (as I said earlier), and I have a good OpenGL
card so I hardware accelerate the UI.
. Preferences > User Interface Colors: The default UI
is darker than it used to be, so I am often fi ne with its
shade. If you like it darker, consider enabling Affects
Label Colors so they darken too. Either way, Cycle
Mask Colors so that multiple masks applied to a layer
automatically have different colors (I have no idea why
that’s disabled by default).