Adobe Media Encoder cannot handle large pictures

I'm having problems with the AME 2017. After switching out one of the compositions to render, I noticed that once I switch over to AME the preview window is stuck on "Rendering...".

I tried to find what the problem was by disabling layers and effects inside the composition, it turned out to be my very large background image I have in the composition. The image is 5000x5000, which is fairly large but I never had any problems prior to this in After Effects neither in workflow, rendering directly out of After Effects or simple RAM previews.

I made the mistake of upgrading AE, now being forced to use this buggy and inferior external render program. Is there any solution to this? Other than the obvious "dont use the image"? I really cannot understand how a program in 2016 dedicated to encoding breaks because of a large image in the composition.