I had a question to you all regarding your use of multiprocessing in AE CS6+.

I've used AE on about 4 different machines in the last few years, with both flavors of OS, all with either 16 or 32 gigs of ram. I've configured my multiprocessing prefs, according to Todd Kopriva's Adobe videos and posts (i.e. making sure I'm not starving the system and other apps, giving 2-3 gigs of ram per cpu etc.).

What I've found on all these systems is that using multiprocessing during ram previews actually seems to take longer than without. There's a variable (but what always feels like a very long) wait as the background processes fire up that seems to nullify the speed benefits once the extra cpu's do kick in. I've also found that the disk cache seems a bit more flakey with multiprocessing enabled (i.e. doesn't seem to cache all the time).

I have invariably ended up just turning multiprocessing off and only using it for final renders (and usually not even then as I often render over night when render time isn't an issue).

So my question is, has everyone else had a similar experience? I haven't seen anyone mention it on the list, so I've always thought It might be a anomaly with my configuration, but I have a new computer now, running Win 8.1 pro 64bit and it's the same situation as my 2012 macbook pro and older systems.

Thanks for your input!

mm