After Effects rendering POORLY on MacStudio Ultra 128 RAM since upgrading to SONOMA 14.1.1

Excellent, glad a reinstall fixed the issue, good too know. Definitely seemed to be a QuickTime issue then. Also still worth considering using an external SSD as a cache drive if you haven't got one, this will lessen the read/writes on the macs main internal drive especially when using AE and other video compositors. 😊👍

To all the enthusiasts here whose responses were appreciated and invaluable. Thank you for helping me to diagnose this issue. Upon reviewing all your good suggestions, I did re-install (took the MacStudio to factory settings). That seemed to have cleared the pixellation issue. If it should re-appear with fiture OS updates etc, I will keep you posted. Your care and curiosity tempered my frustration, and shortened the time to find a solution. Cheers, and here's to a great 2024 to you all. John.

Good luck John. My hunch is that it's a Quicktime issue, a reinstall of the OS should fix.

You are perceptive. I have not relied on TimeMachine much. I should get back into that practice. And your other suggestions make good sense. I will enjoy natigating through. I'll place an order for a new large drive etc. Will report back soon regarding the graphics/memory issues. This journey reminds me of the old Blue Screen of Death days. Oh the pain of being on hold for 30 mins with MS asking for blind help. At least here I am valuing these expert suggestions. Cheers. John. 

Just to add, I don't think rolling back is your best idea to an older system, that would also involve wiping the drive. You are better off reinstalling Sononma.

It sounds like you haven't used Time machine...

Get an external drive (preferably SSD) and format it to APFS in disk utility (if it's a a new uninitialised drive) and open Time Machine and use that to back up to. It will back everything on your Mac including your personal files.

once you got your back up safely stored. Shut down.

Press and hold the power button until the recovery mode options appear. Go into those, first open the disk utility and run the first aid on the Mac OS drive (if necessary view volume from the drop down so you can see all the volumes not just the containers). If it finds errors that can't be fixed (run a couple of times to be sure) you'll need to wipe and reformat the drive. You could just go straight to reinstall but I would recommend fixing the drive first in disk utility just in case there's an underlying disk format issue that simply reinstalling won't fix.

Once done, go back to the main options and simply choose reinstall the OS. Then go through the install process. If you've done a fresh install the Mac will be back to the factory default, it will prompt you to use time machine to re integrate your files and apps. Once that process is complete you should be back to the same point when you made that backup- but hopefully with the graphics issue resolved.

Excellent suggestions. I have a major event this Sunday. So I will get ready next week with a Time Machine backup. Then the other scans and checks. Followed by a full re-install. I do not know (or I do not recall) if, during the re-install, I can select which OS to install. I guess I will find out. I agree about CleanMyMac. Have used it daily for the past several years. Only yesterday I thought to myself, "Why does Apple not learn from CleanMyMac and have an internal native cleaning App as part of every system?" I will check out SSDs. They always seemed expensive to me, and I had a feeling that the transfer rate to an external device might slow me down. Perhaps the technology has improved enough for me to give that a try. I have dozens of external drives for storage/archives. I am paranoid about drives crashing/dying so I have very many. Whichever model I purchase, there is always a better one. Indeed, one day, I might have to buy the BIG arrays. They cost more than a car. Cheers and chat next week when I have the time after this project. I have a ppreciated everyone's input.  

Hi John, well firstly it was good that the diagnostic did not find any issue. If it's any reassurance I'm running a similar Mac Studio with Sonoma and use AfterEffects, without any issue. M2 Max with 64gb OS 14.1.2 

Did you also perform the disc utility first aid scan?  The OS could have issues if there are problems, they may even get progressively worse.

However a simple reinstall of the system could fix the issue, but this might mean using disc utility first to check and if necessary reformat the whole drive and then performing a fresh install. 

it's obviously important that you back up your work first, presumably you keep regular Time Machine backups? 

Macs are still generally reliable machines, but they still need regular maintenance, disc and permission errors are common. So I do keep the Mac on for periods of time to allow maintenance scripts to run. I also use MacPaw (Clean My Mac), there are some useful cache cleaner and maintenance options which set the systems maintenance to run. I keep a regular backup using Time Machine, and I also work from external drives where I keep my work documents and projects on rather than using the internal drive, but that's just my preference. Also because some apps like AE are quite heavy on cache storage I use a dedicated external drive just for that to minimise the read writes, because SSDs do have a limited number of read writes (although that said I've been using SSDs for over 6 years and not one has failed yet). That's just how I work.

But definitely try a full reinstall, as suggested above, it does fix most OS related issues.

Hi I want to. But first I think I would have to back-up everything? I would have to somehow get a proper safe backup on an external drive. Need to look up how to do that properly so I do not lose vital data. Not sure if this will mean it puts the Mac back to factory settings, and I have to spend time re-connecting. But so be it. I think I should roll back. Just not sure how to do it. If I re-set to factory settings, not sure how I can then select the operating system when I power up again. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks. 

@jn81265522 

Have you tried rolling macOS back to Ventura 13.x?

Hello. I ran the Diasnotic test on the MacStudio. Attached is the simple test result which says, "No issues found. Ref Code ADP000".

In conducting addtional experiments last night, the problem of massive pixelation and damage is now ALSO appearing when I am using Final Cut Pro. When I skim the head across the timeline of a simple MP4 video of a simple timeline, it shows terrible results. When FCP renders out the video, some (not all) of the terrible pixelation appears (rapidly) in the output. 

I do not use the MacStudio much. I have kept it in excellent condtion. The day I installed Sonoma, this memory issue started. The same issue does not happen on my older MacBook Pro using the older OS. 

With FCP, one cannot change any memory/RAM allocations. So this really is now an Apple issue I think. In all my decades of design work, I have seen 'slow' machines, but I have never seen this kind of memory/refresh. Something is very wrong with Sonoma and how it can handle the simplest task. Thanks, everyone. John.