Known Participant

Severe performance degradation & memory issues in AE 2025 & 2026

Forum|Forum|20 days ago
July 31, 2026
9 replies
83 views

Hi everyone,

I’m writing to bring attention to ongoing, severe performance issues in After Effects starting from the 2025 releases. As a paying Creative Cloud subscriber, the current state of the software has severely impacted my workflow and daily productivity. I cannot work anymore smoothly with the latest AE versions.

The Key Issues:

Memory & Resource Spikes: Rapid, unexplained RAM/disk usage leading to lag and full app freezes.
Preview & Timeline Lag: Severe slowdowns during simple composition playback and UI interaction compared to previous versions (e.g., AE 2024).
System Instability: Frequent crashes and memory leak behaviors even when standard troubleshooting steps are taken (purging media cache, resetting preferences, allocation adjustments).
Sudden File Incompatibility (MP4 & MOV): Files that worked fine previously—especially standard .mp4 and .mov containers—are suddenly throwing errors, failing to import, or displaying as unsupported/corrupted media without any logic.

I have reached a point where paying for a software subscription that requires rolling back to older versions just to remain functional is completely unreasonable. We are paying full price for tools that should be production-ready.

Questions for the Community & Adobe Team:

Are other users facing these exact file import errors and performance bottlenecks on recent builds? Please upvote or reply with your specs so Adobe sees the scale of this.
Is there a known fix or timeline for the MP4/MOV codec/importer bug?
How can paying users request a billing credit or partial refund for the months this software has been unviable for professional work?

I hope we can get clear answers and actual fixes from the development team soon.

I appreciate each reply from other ADOBE users facing the same problems.

ADOBE WHAT IS GOING ON?

Thanks in advance

Alba

Alba27699334tz3uAuthor

Known Participant

Hi @Kevin-Monahan

thanks for your reply. Regarding your questions:

My equipment: Mac Book Pro M1 Max 64 GB RAM
After Effects: I’m having the previously issues mentioned with the latest After effects 2025 versions and the ones from 2026.
This errors occurred with almost each project I was working on. Those projects normally contain all different types of files inside: pngs, mp4, swf, mov, wav, etc.
The mp4 and Mov files giving errors it is not on an specific type of video recorded with one type of camera. Some of this vides were recorded with phone devices, some other with cameras and others were created using an Adobe Software and rendered from Media Encoder.

These are pretty common issues occurring with the 2025 and 2026 versions, I talked with many other designers, video editors and motion artists and we all are dealing with the same problem. Most of us had to go back to older versions because the newest one are definitely not working properly.

Hope to hear back from you soon.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Hi @Alba27699334tz3u:

Sorry to hear that you are having trouble.

For the most part, After Effects 2025 and After Effects 2026 are performing well on the workstations that I maintain.

If I was experiencing your issues, I would do the following:

• Third-party effects tend to cause some of the issues that you have described. Work with After Effects in Safe Mode in a new project from scratch for a little while. If that goes smoothly, open a current project while still in Safe Mode. If a dialog box for missing effects shows up, take a screenshot. Work with that project for a little bit with the missing effects. If that goes smoothly, relaunch After Effects (this leaves Safe Mode) and then immediately use the Effects Manager to disable the effects that were missing. With those effects disabled, work in After Effects for a little bit. If that goes smoothly, reach out to the publisher of the third-party effects that you’re using to see if there is an update available or find an alternative effect that isn’t causing memory leaks and crashes.

• For UI lag, disable third-party extensions and add-ons and work in Ae for a little while. Also, if any of your Text Layers are using faux bold or faux italic, switch to the bold or italic version of that font (if available) so that those two options in the Character panel can be disabled.

• For the MP4 files and MOV files that you are having trouble with, I’d take the time to verify the storage media with something like Disk Utility and TechTool Pro under macOS or equivalents under Windows. I’d also transcode a few of the files to a CODEC that’s known to work well inside of After Effects like ProRes.

• I’d also double-check all source footage file names and file paths for special characters and rename files as needed.

- Warren

Alba27699334tz3uAuthor

Known Participant

Hi @Warren Heaton ,

I’m steal dealing with the same issues and it seems to get worse cause at some point Media Enconder gets frozen when it tries to render my projects. Apart from that the last error message I’m getting is related to the Keylight effect and some kind of GPU error:

I would like to add to the information above about my equipment that I’m working with the Operating System TAHOE 26.6

Do you have any update related to the mentioned issues?

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Hi @Alba27699334tz3u:

Try narrowing down your source footage to formats that are known to work well for motion design. You mentioned MP4 and MOV, but you didn’t mention CODEC, frame size, or frame rate.

For the GPU error, it would help to know your Comp settings and what’s happening in your project. It would also help to know more about capacity and space available on your M1 Max 64GB RAM MacBook Pro. That RAM and CPU should give you a good mount of flexibility (which I’m sure you’re aware of).

Are you able to continue in software mode for the “Error de Efectos de GPU” message?

As far as the Keylight error goes, that looks like a permissions issue that you should be able to resolve by making sure the permissions of the folder specified in the file path has permission to Read & Write, not just Read. This article is slanted toward Sequoia, but it may help with making sure Ae can run as expected: https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/video-audio-apps-macos-sequoia-compatibility-issues.html

K

Kevin-Monahan

Community Manager

Hi Alba,

Sorry to hear you're running into these issues.

To help the community determine whether you're hitting a known issue or something specific to your system, could you provide a few more details?

Which version of After Effects are you using (Help > About After Effects)?
What operating system and hardware are you using (CPU, GPU, RAM)?
Are the performance issues occurring in all projects or only certain ones?
Regarding the MP4/MOV files, are these files from a particular camera or application, and do they still import correctly into an older version of After Effects?

If possible, please also share a sample file that fails to import (if you can) and any error message you receive. That will help us determine whether this is related to a specific codec, container, or importer.

As for refunds or billing questions, the community isn't able to process those requests. If it turns out you're experiencing a product issue that has significantly affected your work, Adobe Customer Care would be the appropriate team to discuss your account or subscription. Check out the chat pod in the lower-right corner to get started.

Hopefully, with a little more information, we can help narrow down what's going on with your issues. Sorry for the frustration.

Thanks,
Kevin

Alba27699334tz3uAuthor

Known Participant

hi @Kevin-Monahan ,

please read my last post replying @Warren Heaton - to your questions:

I’ve installed two AE versions: 26.6 and 25.3 - sometimes I get errors only in one sometimes the two of them….
The performance issues are happening with all the files I created in the last months. I’m not typically working with very complex effects or projects, these are pretty easy short videos for marketing purposes.
The videos I use are from different sources, sometimes I cannot tell with which. type of camera were recorded, some of them are from Users and were filmed with a Phone device. Some of them were created and redered with Adobe Tools Premiere/AfterEffects to Media Encoder.
The most complex fx I could use are the 3D layers or a Keylight.
My equipment: MacBook Pro M1 Max / 64 GB Ram / Operating System TAHOE 26.6

I hope this info can help find a solution

K

Kevin-Monahan

Community Manager

Hi Alba,

Thanks for the additional information. I know this has been frustrating.

Since you're seeing several different issues across multiple projects, the most helpful next step would be to isolate one of them so we can investigate it properly.

If possible, please share a small project that consistently reproduces one of these issues, along with its source media, or provide clear steps that reproduce the problem in a new project. If you can't share the project publicly, let us know.

That will give us something specific to investigate rather than trying to diagnose several different symptoms at once.

Thanks,
Kevin

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