2011

Disk cached results are called intermediate results. It is counter-productive to
enable intermediate results at every node in your composition: the increased
disk usage in reading and writing to the disk cache will negate the gains from
caching. Instead, try to identify the subgraph parts of your composition that
are costly to compute and are heavily used, and cache only the outputs of
those subgraphs.
For example, if you have nine subgraphs connected to nine different image
sources of a single Reaction node, you can cache the outputs of those nine
subgraphs. In this way, working in Reaction will only involve reading disk
cached results for the nine subgraphs, rather than re-computing each one of
them at potentially very high cost.
Intermediate results are the results rendered at the output of any node, other
than the output nodes, in the dependency graph. When you set a node to
create intermediate results, the frames displayed in the Player when you
preview the results are saved to your local media cache. These frames do not
need to be reprocessed as you continue adding tool nodes and viewing the
results.
For example, you can add a glow tool to your composition and set it to create
intermediate results. As you play the composition (or scrub through the
frames), the glow is displayed as it processes. At the same time, the result is
stored in your local media cache. If you add another node after the glow,
Composite will not reprocess the frame.
Intermediate results are stored in the media cache as long as there is room.
When the media cache is full, Composite will start discarding the images that
are least recently used. You should consider this and the type of work you are
doing when you turn on intermediate results for a node.
Because intermediate results are disk-based, they are available from one
Composite session to the next: closing a composition (or closing Composite
itself) does not clear the media cache. In contrast, memory cached results are
discarded when a composition is closed (or Composite itself is closed).
Composite’s in-memory cache is read before attempting to read from the
intermediate results. If a frame is generated and reused before the memory
cache is exhausted, there won't be any need to visit the IRs in the media cache.
To create intermediate results on a node:
➤ Do one of the following:
■ In the Schematic, click the orange IR tab at the lower-right of a node.
■ Select a node from the dependency graph and click the IR button in
the Tools Options area.
Caching | 227