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michaelb5994751
Participant
July 30, 2019
Question

Why Is Previewing 1080p Footage on AE on 1/4 So Laggy While On Premiere It's Just Fine?

  • July 30, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 336 views

I can't understand why just previewing regular 1080p footage on after effects on 1/4 resolution immediately laggy. From the very beggining its that slow motion playback. And in premiere playback on the clip works just fine. Why is it like this, even at quarter resolution? It makes so sense other than that after effects is the most poorly optimized program on Adobes lineup.

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    2 replies

    OussK
    Community Expert
    OussKCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 1, 2019

    Did you try to use the GPU accelerator from file/project settings?

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 30, 2019

    Every compositing app has slow previews for renders because every single pixel in the frame is looked at and examined for any changes. That is a highly simplified explanation but that is the way all of them work because they are not designed to edit, they are designed to process a bunch of individual layers. The more you do in the comp the longer those calculations will take.

    Once the preview has cached it should playback just fine if your system meets the minimum system requirements. Experienced AE users learn how to efficiently preview animations and then check a few critical frames at full resolution, then send the comp to be rendered. Amateurs and enthusiasts try to edit movies in AE and are constantly running previews. With a little experience, you will know exactly what your project is going to look like when it is rendered and you will be able to work much faster.

    M
    michaelb5994751Author
    Participant
    July 31, 2019

    I'm  running on a 15 inch 2014 macbook pro retina with 2.5ghz core i7. i know, not amazing specs in 2019 but should be more than enough to playback a simple 1080p clip. the worst part is. even when cached (green bar), playback is still abysmal, with stutters, lag and that deep voice slow motion. its unbearable. even on my new desktop with a 4ghz amd ryzen 2600x is still slow. Again even on a quarter resolution.

    I can have layers on top of layers in premiere and it runs just fine. So i'm sorry, while I appreciate your response, it doesn't solve my issue. 

    D
    David Arbor
    Inspiring
    July 31, 2019

    Rick's response wasn't a solution, it was simply the explanation for how AE works. Try double-clicking your footage to open it in the Layer panel instead of viewing it in the Comp panel via the timeline. A couple versions back AE was optimized to better stream many formats of footage. If you want to edit parts of it into your timeline you can use the In/Out tools on the bottom of the panel to set ranges and bring them into your timeline.

    Also, a "simple 1080p" clip is a relative term. If it's highly compressed format like H.264 or HEVC then it's going to be even harder for the machine to decode than an intermediate format such as ProRes, Cineform, or DNxHR. What format are you working with?

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