Extremely Slow Render/Export on Adobe Media Encoder 2022

[Elfean]

I have been waiting for more than 30 mins for the final video to be rendered. It's already 40 mins and it's barely 50% rendered. Never had this issue before. My laptop specs are as below and my GPU is RTX 3070.

Anyone knows how to solve this sudden issue?

[Fergus H · Accepted solution]

Hi all, 
Despite receiving test files from many of you (thank you!), we have not been able to reproduce this problem at Adobe. That's a bit unusual and certainly frustrating - to you and us - but we do think this issue has been fixed in the latest beta of After Effects and Media Encoder. We'd love to get your feedback on that. Creative Cloud betas are specifically designed to run alongside the release versions and are available in the "Beta apps" section of Creative Cloud Desktop. More information is here: https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/creative-cloud-beta.html

The v23.x beta of After Effects also has the ability to directly export H.264 - without having to use Media Encoder - so your feedback on this would be useful too. More information is available here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/feature-focus-exporting-h-264-from-the...

Regards,

Fergus

[DiR Clarios]

I have the same issue.

I tried to encode an AAE project of 04:20 min by AME took me 20 hours.

The beta versions didn't make it, the same result = 20 hours.

The encode (H.264) by AAE itself took me 1 hour.

[DiR Clarios]

Hi again,

I want to correct and give an update:

- using the beta version of AAE for rendering (lossless) didn't work fine. In the end, the software was hanging, and after 36 !!! hours no progress at all.

- I've installed the AAE 18.0.0 version and rendered the same project (lossless). It was finished after 1,5 hours.

Since many users report the same condition there is a bug within the new versions. In my case, the AAE 18.0.0 worked fine, but the versions above did not.

I hope this information helps some how.

Regards

Dimitrij

[jenkmeister]

Did you use the AE Beta and output using H.264 from the Render Queue? I thought that's what you said in the first message but want to confirm.

Are you able to share the project with us so we can look at what's going on?

[DiR Clarios]

Hi Jenkmeister,
thank you for your reply and for taking care of this.

I've tried several projects, conditions, and AE versions (Win). Summary for the project (ca. 3 min), I'll share with you:
- AE 22.6, Outputs: lossless; >20 h rendering time
- AE Beta , Outputs: H.264 and lossless; 7 h rendering time
- AE 18.0; Outputs: lossless; 1,2 h rendering time

It's amazing how huge the difference is.
What is the best way to share a >100 MB project - can you download it from GDrive?

Regards
Dimitrij

[jenkmeister]

Yes, I can download it from there if you can upload it. If you can also let me know what your machine specs are, that'd be helpful. Thanks!

[UA HandCrafts]

Hi,

it's Dimitrij again. It's my second account.

My machine specs are:

- HP Omen 17-W007NG Notebook

- Processor: Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz

- 20 GB RAM (SK Hynix 2400MHz)

- Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M (v 31.0.15.1640 (6.6.2022))

- OS: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit Version: 19043.2006

The link to the project will come per PN.

Thank you for your support and for taking care! I hope for all of us, it will help to locate the root cause.

Regards

Dimitrij

[jenkmeister]

Thanks. Got the PN / link. We'll get to reproducing this issue today!

[Chris22075378pq15]

Any news on reproducing the issue? 

[jenkmeister]

Unfortunately not. The project takes a while to render but none of the machines we ran it on here produced the same issue. But folks are continuing to investigate to see if we can find a cause. 

[WIGTV]

First of all - thank you Adobe folks for trying to figure this out! It seems to be driving everyone crazy and it's frustrating. I just appreciate everyone trying to find a solution to the problem!

Like many folks right now, I am having a lot of problems with qut a few Adobe products acting wonky and sluggish...Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Media Encoder. However I just noticed with Media Encoder it had switched to "Software" render instead of "Metal" render. I switched it back to "Metal" and it is rendering A LOT quicker. Not "normal" but a lot better. I just wanted to metion this in case others had their Media Encoder switch to "Software." (I could have switched that myself as I was tinkering around trying to get Media Encoder to work better when this whole slow render issue started a few weeks ago.)

I am sure this will all get worked out by the Adobe folks. They always come through! 

[UA HandCrafts]

Just want to highlight, that I have this issue not only with AE.
Also, APP renders extremely slow. I have a project 45 min long with several challenges like multicam sequences, third-party effects, etc.

• APP 22.6.2 and Beta took more than 7 hours to export (H.264)
• APP 15.0 took 1,5 hours!!!

Best regards

Dimitrij

[peters49425313]

I've been having the same issue with the lastest version of After Effects and Media Encoder since the last update. This issue exists on my home machine and work machine, both are of completely different builds. I have coworkers that are having the same issue on their home and work machines. I've run tests with the same file on the same machine for V22.1.1, V23.1, and the beta V23.2 and hands down V22.1.1 has the best performance. V22.1.1 rendered the file in under 10 mins. V23.1 rendered in 54 mins. The beta rendered in 37 mins. So the beta is better but still not close the V22.1.1. I've been watching the Task Manager while each version rendered and the only difference I can see is that each version utilizes the CPU more or less. V22.1.1 will use 80 - 100% and V23.1 and beta V23.2 both used 25 - 45%  of the CPU. The problem lies there.

[mxawng*]

hey @Fergus H — could we unpin this answer? as you can see from the continued discussion on this thread, this issue has (i think very obviously) not been fixed.

[Michał23707845hgz4]

With 22.6 I couldn't preview more than 2 frames with annoying warning box about my ram usage. Render times with 22.6 are horrible!! I've waited 3.5 hours for render to be done. It's unacceptable. I thought the problem is with my slow computers ( 4 core, 16 gb ram each) but I have opened my old projects and everything was the same -  going that way I downgraded AE to older version and it seems to be OK, so I am trying not to loose my job now. Thanks Adobe. 

[jenkmeister]

Well it's not intentional that AE/AME is rendering slower, but we are sorry you're running into the issue. Can you share your project, full computer specs, output formats, etc., so we can attempt to reproduce the issue please?

[jenkmeister]

We might have found a repro overnight. If you're willing, can you do an export from AME where the issue happens, and then when that's complete, go to Help -> Reveal Log Files and find the Adobe Media Encoder Log.txt and Adobe Media Encoder Log-last.txt file and post those back. We are looking for some log lines related to async timeouts. 

[cauthier721]

I'm having the same issue. 😕

Have been rendering a 36min clip. Right now I've waited 9+ hours and 1 hour is left. Never had this issue before. Hopefully you have the solution soon. Tried mutiple 'solutions', except the downloading the beta and none of them worked. I'll try the beta once this is done.

[brunoseven]

Man, I have to say that probably this problem won't be solved soon. I was having it for the last 3 or 4 months and is not solved yet. The solution for me it was change the after effects and media encoder to older versions. Now is working normally again to me

[cauthier721]

What older version worked for you? If the beta doesn't work, I'll try an older version. Thanks for the quick reply. 🙂

[brunoseven]

after effects 22.2.1 and media encoder 22.2.

[cauthier721]

Awesome, yes this fixed the issue. 🙂
My intial video took me 12 hours, when I went to the older version it was onlt 2.5! Apprecaite the help!

[azumbrunnen]

It’s crazy to me that a bug of this magnitude can go public for a
professional workflow tool.

I don’t understand why you need any source files it can’t be this hard to
replicate. It happens with whatever project I open.

[jenkmeister]

If we had seen this before releasing, we would have fixed it. If we could repro it internally now, we would fix it. However it seems to be something related to individual machines. One thought is that it's related to media caches that have gotten corrupted, another is memory being filled up and not clearing on certain machines (though there are fixes for that in the current beta). Or there are some known issues with Intel CPUs that get stuck in balanced performance mode and won't move into high CPU speeds. It could be a multitude of things which is why we are asking for projects to see if it's a project or specific machine situation. We want to find a solution but with all honesty, no one internally is reproducing this. So whatever you can help us, we'd gladly take. 

[azumbrunnen]

What seems confusing is that I have two freshly installed versions of Mac
OS 12.6 with latest AE, one is x86 the other is Apple Silicone. Both have
same problem.

Could it be that Cinema or any 3d tools conflicts with AE since I know c4d
is used in the render pipeline when you turn off classic 3d?