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Paul_Gringo
Inspiring
May 2, 2026
Question

Can you tell me how to speed up the preview in After Effects 26?

  • May 2, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 95 views

Every action I take causes the project cache to constantly refresh, and even moving the mouse cursor slightly makes me wait 20 seconds. This isn't work—it's torture. Here are my settings

    3 replies

    Warren Heaton
    Community Expert
    Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 4, 2026

    You should be able to get better performance than that.

    Can you share your hardware specifications?

    This sounds like it could be graphics driver issue or conflict with an extension or add on.

    As far as Previews go, those can be faster by lowering the Composition Resolution and using the Skip option in the Preview panel.  

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    Paul_GringoAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 4, 2026

    We've ruled out driver issues; I've reset the settings. I used version 2024 on very low-end hardware, and it ran much more smoothly. Now I needed to create a simple video where text and photos appear smoothly—and the program just freezes. And yet the CPU, SSD, and graphics card aren’t even under load. It feels like the program is just sleeping.

    Warren Heaton
    Community Expert
    Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 4, 2026

    How does it behave in Safe Mode?

     

    What image size are the still images? 

    jefubbudu
    jefubbudu
    Inspiring
    May 3, 2026

    I lost 2 repeat customers because i couldn't render fast enough or five them previews after i had made changes. I went on a 7 year quest, talked to other vfx artists, tried every new suggestion from dozens of youtubers even, swapped components, eventually got a new computer 7 times more powerful, and... then i lost the second client. Got some use out of reducing preview resolution or correcting errors such as caching to the wrong drive or not using MP4 files, but nothing grand.

     So from my personal experience-

     

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    Paul_GringoAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 4, 2026

    I get it—working with Adobe products is a nightmare. So far, only Lightroom is still up to the task; it doesn’t freeze and runs very quickly. Premiere, Encoder, After Effects, and Photoshop have become very slow and unstable, and issues with rendering and exporting make working with these products impossible.

    R
    Community Expert
    RobShultzCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 2, 2026

    Could you please try going to Edit/Purge all memory and disk cache and try again after completion?

    Also giving us your system specifications would be helpful.

    P
    Paul_GringoAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 4, 2026

    I've tried all that! The problem isn't with my hardware. 

    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700K (3.40 GHz)

    NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 

    DDR5 6400 64GB

    SSD Samsung 990PRO

    You think I can't work with photo animations on this hardware?)))))

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