Green Artifact Pixel Noise When Effects Added

I’m getting green bouncing pixel noise in my comps and renders when adding specific effects to a layer. This has been happening for over a year, after many OS and software updates. I first noticed the issue when adding Maxon’s Red Giant Optical Glow. This effects is the main troublemaker. I’m now noticing even effects like Gaussian Blur or Fast Box Blur are also contributing to the problem. The glitch can happen on everything from .mov, .mp4, shape layers, solids, etc. It doesn’t seem to be dependent on layer type.

I’ve changed the renderer from Metal to Software Only, turned off hardware acceleration, turned off multi-frame rendering, with no luck.

If I send the problem project to a coworker’s computer (who is using the exact same Mac specs as mine) he can view and render the comp with effects and have no artifacts.

Side note: I’m also having render issues with Maxon Cinema 4D. Maxon is looking into the problem and is thinking it might be a hardware issue over a software issue. If that’s the case, I wonder if this is also a hardware failure problem.

Has anyone has this problem before? Any suggestions to try? Thank you.

Specs:

Mac Studio 2022

macOS Sequoia 15.7.2 (I can’t update to Tahoe 26 due to company IT restrictions)

M1 Ultra

128GB Memory

1TB HD with 300GB free

After Effects 25.5.0

Red Giant 2026.2.0

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