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AE CC 2018 ridiculously slow

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
February 12, 2018
71 replies
65460 views

Seriously, what is wrong with AE CC 2018!?

I'm on an absolute beast of a workstation, a HP Z840 with 128 GB RAM, dual Titan X:s and so forth, but I can't even preview a simple text animation!

It takes forever to preview, and playback tops out at about 10 fps... I've got nothing in the timeline but animated text, no other graphics, no video, nothing.

And it's not only the preview that's messed up, the entire interface is laggy, when I move the cursor in the timeline sometimes it takes like a second for it to catch up.

Everything I try to do, import a file, keyframe an object, add an effect to something, and so on, takes forever.

I've done restarts, checked nvidia drivers, purged all memory and disk cache, cleaned database an cache, everything you could ever think of, but it's still painfully slow.

I never had these problems in cc 2017, it ran like a dream.

I'm at a point where it is virtually imposible to work, and it's making me a bit frustrated to say the least.

Don't tell me I have to downgrade to be able to work, that would just be, well, silly.

Why on earth would anybody release a version this unstable?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Hi Niklas.Alden,

Please contact support for assistance with this: FAQ: How do I contact Adobe Support?

Let us know any solutions they help you find.

Thanks,
Kevin

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darionLeigh333

Participating Frequently

Another solution to slow Ram playback.

After initial RAM preview has been generated (or during if on a fast machine). hover your mouse over the stage (don;t click) and press the maximize panel hotkey. This will hide all panels apart from the one you have your mouse over.

Playback will instantly improve back to the good old days of earlier releases.

Sad to have to do this but easy enough to toggle that when working.

Maximize panel can be mapped in the edit>keyboard shortcuts

Mine is set to the ¬ key.

Hope this helps. It save my a****

No thanks to Adobe.

darionLeigh333

Participating Frequently

Ok so I am posting a solution but it is pretty lame and by no means satisfactory.

I am on beast of a machine but have the same issues.

Basically as far as I can tell...

- After Effects can't handle 4k screens, or at least rendering it's own interface. (don't ask me why but it can't)

Two crap solutions that are better than nothing.

One: Although this is really crap and you paid for a 4k monitor... switch you screen to a lower resolution (eg 1920 x 1080). This definately worked on mine but looks like crap.

Two: After you initial RAM preview has finally clunked it's way to completion...zoom right into the timeline (use + and key). This appears to work most of the time. then zoom out for editing. A real pain to do but if you are desperate - it could help.

I am not sure that Adobe realise just how damaging this issue is. My productivity is down by 50% at least. It is appalling that this was even realised at all. Until then hope this helps my struggling motion buddies.

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bevlak

Participating Frequently

Part of the slowness is to do with as drawing the layer panel UI. I've found d if you collapse that window so you can't see the layers it rund faster - this is probably what's happening when you zoom in on the timeline. I'm also noticing that I get frequent crashes if I resize any UI panels during a ram preview. This is a hard crash without any error message. Ae just disappears completely and I have to reopen it. Very annoying

V

vpage1342

Participating Frequently

Wow. I was having the same issue and decided to contact their "support."

Allowed them remote access to my computer, they deleted my cache (hopefully this doesn't negatively impact my future workflow or delete any important files!) and messed around with some other settings.

Then after the issue was STILL not resolved, they basically told me "too bad, this is how After Effects is designed and it's obviously not going to show you your preview in real time."

So I guess there is no resolution for this issue and I have to wait for the preview to render and watch a slow-motion, choppy version of my animation every time I so much as move the character's pupil. Takes nearly a minute to render what is currently a 15-minute animation and will eventually be close to 2 minutes long. Wonderful, I'm sure my boss will be ecstatic to hear that I won't be meeting my deadline for this video because of Adobe.

loveliftsing

Participant

It took me 27 work hours to create a 30 second promo video for my job. TWENTY SEVEN HOURS for 30 seconds. I could knock out a 30 second video on the earlier version in about 4 hours, start to finish, uploaded and done.

I have a deadline in a few hours, and it has taken over one hour JUST to render... guarantee it will not be finished and ready to go by the time my boss needs it. I absolutely feel your pain. I made him take a look at what I was dealing with and even he couldn't understand why this was happening. I should also point out that this is happening on two completely different computers of mine (Windows Desktop for work and my personal MacBook Pro), so unfortunately, I can't blame Windows this time!

I will be getting my money back for this and uninstalling this garbage. Get your scheisse together, Adobe...

Fresh Squeezed Creative

Known Participant

4.2ghz i7 iMac - brand new here with 40gb Ram also painfully slow.

AE terally struggling to swing a screencast on the Y axis, with a small amount of pan and scan and a voiceover for a couple minutes...

Come on guys, this kinda stuff should have been system heavy in 2006, not nowadays.....

thomasdavis1979

Participant

We made the mistake and updated to the newest release in July 2018. My team member and I are at an even worse crawl. As the project lengthens, as does the lag in preview, typing text, simple screen updates. I will say this. I see improvement upon signing out of the Creative Cloud completely. Signing back in, re-syncs fonts from Typekit and does, truly, improve performance. I must do it daily.

Not a fix or "solution" but is a slight workaround...as much as frequently emptying cache and the database...which I hate hearing about.

B

bryantc79007332

Participant

thomasdavis1979 wrote
We made the mistake and updated to the newest release in July 2018. My team member and I are at an even worse crawl. As the project lengthens, as does the lag in preview, typing text, simple screen updates. I will say this. I see improvement upon signing out of the Creative Cloud completely. Signing back in, re-syncs fonts from Typekit and does, truly, improve performance. I must do it daily.
Not a fix or "solution" but is a slight workaround...as much as frequently emptying cache and the database...which I hate hearing about.

You and I are in the same boat. I made the mistake of starting a new project in CC 2018 thinking it would streamline things, but my workflow has come to a crawl. Initially I was hoping it was just me and that AE CC 2018 needed to be optimized to get the most out of it - it seems I am wrong. I can build the same exact file with cookie cutter effects/motions in AE CS6 and AE CC 2018, and the rendering times/workflow in general will take significantly longer on AE CC 2018.

Suffice to say, I might even recommend to our company to end the subscription all together if it isn't worth it. I would love to use AE CC, but if it is going to be this much of a hassle - which doesn't seem to be able to be corrected, I will have to go back to CS6.

Computer Specs:

vinnynew

Participant

When working on projects are you degrading the quality to 1/2 1/3 or 1/4 of the quality of the final project? I literally just found out how to do this after searching “optimization“ for something unrelated. This has done wonders for my workflow and could be the answer to yours as well. I posted in this thread a long time ago and like everyone else received 0 help from support. If you don’t know how to do this let me know I’ll check this later today! Cheers! -Vinny

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bevlak

Participating Frequently

@dave laronde

I know what you mean, but personally these issues are affecting EVERY version of ae on the windows 10 OS. (To date on my system, cc2014, 15, 15.3, 17 & 18)

Example: empty composition with a single .MP3 file, no visuals at all. If I ram preview it then open or resize a UI panel the sound slows down for 2-3 seconds. I mean that's ridiculous. How much ram is the UI using!? I have 32 GB and this never happened before using win7 and 16gb ram. The only difference I can see is the OS and how Adobe is utilising it. I also use Maxon cinema 4d and have noticed no issues whatsoever, so I'd say adobe should be able to work this out if maxon can.

I have an 8/16 core intel i7, 32gb ram and a 500gb SSD with .128gb SSD for scratch. Oh and a gtx1080 for good measure

It appears This is a Microsoft and Adobe issue and it needs to be fixed.

P.M.B

Legend

bevlak wrote
I also use Maxon cinema 4d and have noticed no issues whatsoever, so I'd say adobe should be able to work this out if maxon can.

The reason is that Maxon has competition (EDIT: in fact they have a dragon to slay). While Adobe gets an earful they see no financial repercussions for their choices. In other words they do not have to worry about losing pro users because pro users have no other option but to continue using their product. The only thing they really have to worry about is bringing on new users.

That's not to say they do not care about or listen to their pro user base. It's just that there is no natural urgency. It's not even conscious thing. At some level someone is looking at the raw data and saying: "well, we're not losing any users so let's just focus on bringing in new ones." That's just business. When an alternative arrives and Adobe is forced to compete in the marketplace they will start singing a different tune. Of course, first they will simply try to aquire the new product, hopefully that won't happen.

There are in fact, here in America, laws in place that can FORCE companies to compete when lack of competition starts to effect consumers in a overly adverse way. Although I think, at the moment government leans more toward the "get out of corporations way" philosophy than any "protect consumers" philosophy.

It's all a moot point anyway because I know for a fact that a extinction level asteroid is going to hit the earth in about three days from today so....turn off the computer, take off your shoes and socks, breath deep through your nose a few times and get ready for the future..;)

~Gutterfish

Mike_Abbott

Legend

Gutterfish wrote
....It's all a moot point anyway because I know for a fact that a extinction level asteroid is going to hit the earth in about three days from today so....turn off the computer, take off your shoes and socks, breath deep through your nose a few times and get ready for the future..;)

Gee, thanks GF. Thought you could have at least dropped me a private message to let me know. You posted that on the 20th, and I've just read it on the 22nd...

Anyway, looking on the bright side, I don't think I'll bother mowing the grass tomorrow...

X

XerachCruz

Participating Frequently

The same here.

I come from CC2014 that was worked perfectly, I have updated in half of the project because some .mxf files not recogniced by CC2014... and now with CC2018 all is very very slower in comparison. Every time I make a mask I have to move the mouse slowly so that the After does not throw me points far away because refresh the interface very slow. The whole program is much slower in everything, with the same equipment and the same project ... I regret have updated.

I work on a Intel 6/12 core 64GB RAM and GTX TITAN, it's a computer more that enough for the project in which I'm working, only with two layers of 4K video and some solids with masks.

Dave_LaRonde

Inspiring

There's nothing that compels you to use CC 2018. If you're happy using CC 2014, you can use it.

CC 2018 may be ready for serious use about the time CC 2020 or 2021 is released, but I won't guarantee that.

X

XerachCruz

Participating Frequently

You're right, I'll continue using CC2014 as much as I can. I had not needed to update until yesterday, when they passed me a .mxf with new codec that does not recognize CC2014.

I have already installed it again, and it works smoothly. I will keep the CC2018 installed only for when a client send me some project of that version, to be able to convert to CC2014. Or when it happens like yesterday and I have no choice but to use CC2018.

CC2017 gives me problems too. When I try to rotate a mask, as soon as I move the mouse to rotate, I scale rather than rotate... strange... for this reason I stayed in CC2014 in the past... I will do my projects mostly in CC2014, that seems to be the only version that works well... I hope not pass 4 years more for have a AfterEffects version stable.

D

daddyoktm

Participant

Stick with 2014. It’s easily 10xs faster in multiproccer mode if you have enough ram. Since that version it doesn’t seem AE has been truly multithreaded on the rendering as you can see from the activity monitor when it’s rendering.

Theodoros Tziatzios

Participating Frequently

Here is a small part of the updates After Effects has gone through:

.
..
...
CC 2014.0 (13.0)
CC 2014.1 (13.1) - Support for High-DPI (4K-5K monitors) implemented
CC 2014.2 (13.2)
CC 2015.0 (13.5) - Re-architecture of code - Multiprocessing removed, everything gone downhill...
CC 2015.1 (13.6)
CC 2015.2 (13.7)
CC 2015.3 (13.8.1)
...
..
.

We work on 4K DCI monitors. Versions of After Effects from v13.1 and older, are unable to scale correctly on High-DPI monitors and are pretty much unusable. So if we would want to keep high-dpi support along with multi-processing we must install the sweet-spot version of After Effects, which is CC2014 (v13) but update it only up to v13.2.0.49

Good luck doing that with the Creative Cloud app!

Of course working with such old versions, you forget about Lumetri scopes (added on CC 2017 - v14.2) and a few good things that newer versions of AFX actually have.

PGZ@Mobibase

Inspiring

Hi, did you try developer mode ?

I saw somewhere that this kind of trick does not work on latest versions, but I have to say, I did it last year on a similar rig as yours, and all is going really smooth on it.....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tQLH0QGGpDk

All cores are synchronised, average of 50 to 80 GB of RAM (out of 128) are used by AE, GTX 180ti used and maxed out -only- when needed, raid ssd's caching like a charm.

Only thing, I'm not on the latest AE version....just the last "stable" one which fits my system.

Maybe give it a try ?

Hope this helps

Theodoros Tziatzios

Participating Frequently

A few major releases back, Adobe changed how the previews work and how the interface is redrawn.

I'm guessing this was done on one hand to enable After Effects to be more responsive (real-time) in previewing the timeline

and on the other hand, make the UI compatible with higher monitor (4K) resolutions, deal with OS scaling issues etc.

This decision was catastrophic for pro users. We couldn't care less for real-time previewing because 90% of the time

we deal with small durations (from 10 to 30 seconds projects) with hundreds of layers. I personally don't mind waiting for a timeline to preview but when it's done caching the frames on RAM, playback should be rock solid, like on previous versions of After Effects. On newer versions, the RAM cached playback on a loop, is inconsistent at best.

Also, the UI redrawing solution that was implemented is significantly slower. I am a script developer and I experience this everyday. Scripts run on After Effect v12.2, draw shapes instantly and interaction is smooth and fluid. On After Effects v15.1.1 shapes draw slower and interaction is sluggish at best. (This of course applies to any kind of layer AV, shape, solid etc.)

Previewing a timeline with several layers is unusable (on a Z820 with 128GB Ram and HP Z Turbo Drives).

One solution that I use to preview comps correctly, is to precompose the whole timeline so I only have one layer in the timeline but this a laughable workaround.

Already in this forum, there are numerous threads about how slow newer AFX versions are. The proposed solutions to work on half-resolutions or precompose, or suggestions not work with too many layers are a disappointment for pro users.

What adobe and every developer need to understand is that all these complaints about speed and sluggish behavior isn't something that we can't test immediately and everyday on our machines. Everyone can just fire up CC2014 and then fire up the same exact project on v15 and see the difference. It's there. On the same machine. It's not the RAM, its not the OS or some hardware quirk or some magic setting in the preferences. It's the software. It's After Effects itself. Adobe should take complaints from users who have invested 10-20K on hardware like niklas.alden and other pro users a bit more seriously.

I understand that newer solutions on a software need time to mature and tweak, but time passes, new versions of AFX are coming out and these new solutions fail miserably to deliver on what they were expected to deliver. If a new technology doesn't deliver on a specific amount of time, it's better to admit it, take a step back and reevaluate than to dump a s*it load of developer hours to brute-force it to work with mediocre results.

Let us hope the next version of After Effects (v16 ? I've lost track...) is better.

Myself and many pro users are on "one last chance" before we drop After Effects for something else.

I'm sorry for the angry tone of my post. After Effects is a tool that we have invested in for so many years and it brings us a great sense of disappointment, experiencing all these wrong development decisions affecting our work.

Theodoros Tziatzios

R

rlmilton

Participating Frequently

Amen... sooo frustrating, for sooo long now. Is anyone at Adobe listening to THIS??

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