Community Manager

Question

After Effects (Beta) now on Apple Silicon

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
October 26, 2021
46 replies
93122 views

We are very pleased to announce that a version of After Effects which runs natively on Apple silicon is now available for beta testing. Starting today in build 22.1.1.9, After Effects (Beta) will run natively on Macs that use the Apple M1 family of processors. You are invited to test it out and please let us know if anything isn't working as you expect. Please also try it out together with the latest Betas of Premiere Pro and Media Encoder. We are looking forward to hearing your feedback!

This first version of After Effects (Beta) for Apple silicon contains all the core functionality of the app, including nearly all native effects, all layer types, Roto Brush 2, Draft 3D, and, of course, Multi-Frame Rendering. After Effects has greatly benefited from the work done to bring Premiere Pro to Apple silicon, which included our team porting AE's render pipeline to support Motion Graphics Templates. Since After Effects and Premiere Pro share components for many media formats, you can expect to see the same media types available for use in After Effects (Beta) as are available in Premiere Pro on Apple silicon.

There are currently a few limitations and known issues when running After Effects (Beta) natively on Apple silicon which are listed below. We will post updates to this forum as these issues are fixed and new builds become available.

Features Not Yet Available

These features are still in the process of being ported for Apple silicon. All of the listed components should continue to work if After Effects (Beta) is run under Rosetta.

~~Content-Aware Fill for Video~~ Available in After Effects (Beta) 22.2.0.99 and later
~~Importing Animate/Flash files~~ Available in After Effects (Beta) 22.3.0.82 and later
Importing clips using the Cineform codec
~~Keylight~~ Available in After Effects (Beta) 22.2.0.30 and later
~~Mocha AE~~ Available in After Effects (Beta) 22.2.0.30 and later
~~Cineware~~ Available in After Effects (Beta) 22.1.1.50 and later
~~C4D Renderer~~ Available in After Effects (Beta) 22.1.1.50 and later

Third-Party Integrations

With the large number of plug-ins, scripts, and extensions available for After Effects, it is likley that some of them may not work when After Effects (Beta) is running natively on Apple silicon. In these cases, please contact the third-party developer to see if there is a new version available that has been updated for Apple silicon.

All third-party plug-ins must be updated by their developers in order to be compatible with After Effects running natively on Apple silicon. Third-party plug-ins that have already been ported for Apple silicon should show up and behave as expected. Incompatible plug-ins will not be available for use when After Effects (Beta) runs natively on Apple silicon and will appear as "Missing" when opening existing projects that use them. To use installed plug-ins that have not been updated, see the instructions below on how to run After Effects (Beta) under Rosetta 2 emulation.

Any installed plug-ins that aren't compatible with Apple silicon will be listed in a new dialog shown when After Effects (Beta) launches. You can disable this dialog by selecting "Never Again" before dismissing it. To show the dialog again after disabling it, reset the application preferences.

Known Issues

Drivers for Transmit hardware may be currently unsupported and require updates.
Rendering the Detail-preserving Upscale effect for previews and output will be slower than expected. Work to optimize the performance of Detail-preserving Upscale on Apple silicon is ongoing.
Having Blackmagic Desktop Video 12.1 installed can cause a crash when After Effects is launched. Please update Blackmagic Desktop Video to version 12.2 or higher to avoid this crash.

Running After Effects (Beta) under Rosetta 2 Emulation

As it has been up until now, this new version of After Effects (Beta) can still be run using Rosetta 2 emulation. Right-click on the Adobe After Effects (Beta).app, select Get Info, then enable "Open using Rosetta". This should allow you to use all of the features which are not yet available when running natively, but at the cost of some performance.

The non-beta version of After Effects will continue to run under Rosetta 2 on Apple silicon.

Thanks very much for participating in Adobe's Public Beta program. We appreciate your thoughts and feedback!

Feedback

This topic has been closed for replies.

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PipoTime

New Participant

Every time I try to Open after effects beta on my 14 MacBook Pro M1 pro chip i keep getting an error that says

"Adobe After Effects (Beta)" is damaged and can't be opened.

You should move it to the Trash.... I tried everything and was not able to fix it, even uninstalling it and reinstalling it

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fraidym94034590

New Participant

I'm enjoying the beta version immensly! Problem I'm running into is switching between beta and the latest cc version of AE. I can't share any of my files with the rest of the team because they don't have beta installed and can't install it. (They use a regular windows computer) I used to be able to switch between the two but after one of the updates I can no longer do it.
Any advice?

trashcaneron

Inspiring

I'm enjoying the beta version immensly! Problem I'm running into is switching between beta and the latest cc version of AE. I can't share any of my files with the rest of the team because they don't have beta installed and can't install it. (They use a regular windows computer) I used to be able to switch between the two but after one of the updates I can no longer do it.
Any advice?

By @fraidym94034590

Same here! Used to be able to exchange between the two and now it doesn't work. The new stable version is better but still a ton of memory leak issues!

T

Tiffany24454697t9tp

New Participant

when i do it it doesnt show the rosetta it just says folder or locked, ive done everything, someone please help.

zandwacht

Inspiring

Hi Tiffany, AfterEffects for M1 is out of beta now: you don't need Rosetta anymore, unless you have old Intel-only plugins. See the announcement on Adobe Blog or download the 22.3 and 22.4 update from your Creative Cloud app.

J

jamesastro

Inspiring

Is there any documentation that tells developers how to upgrade their Mac plugins? I haven't found any details in the AE SDK documentation.

J

jamesastro

Inspiring

Aha! I found the documentation:

https://ae-plugins.docsforadobe.dev/intro/apple-silicon-support.html#intro-apple-silicon-support

J

Jen Farrow

New Participant

I have had major issues using After Effects on the M1 Mac! I cannot download the Beta version of After Effects as it does not appear on my side panel. Also the projects I have been working on have not been able to render out (even when left for days). This is an on going issue and Adobe are offering to export my projects for me on their end. I would not recommend purchasing an M1 mac for high end video editing work as After Effects (contrary to what Adobe says) is NOT currently supported on the M1 mac and doesn't currently work for Rosetta 2. Can you please send a link so I can at least try the Beta version of After Effects?

DannyBCreative

Participating Frequently

We've switched to DaVinci Resolve and Fuision Studio as both work very well on ther M1 Macs. I hope Adobe gets it together at some point, but for now production continues sans Adobe.

F

Filippo Marchetti

Known Participant

Hello, and thanks for answering the thread.
Testing the latest beta 22.4.0 (build 32) on an M1 Ultra 48-Core 128GB Ram and I have t main issues:

Mercuty GPU Acceleration (Metal) is weirldy much slower than Mercury Software only; is this part of the software being beta? I'm asking because the hardware acceleration should be much faster. Perhaps the metal implementation of the M1 Ultra still in development
Generally "poor" performance on the M1 Ultra. I didn't expect threadripper/3090ti performance here but I'm experiencing bad performance, especially with shape layers.

I'm very patient, so I don't mind waiting weeks, even months for things to be fixed.
I was just wondering if the team is aware of such things and if the relatively poor performance on the M1 Ultra is just linked to the current state of the beta.
I have gotten a 20-core (16 performance cores) specifically to take advantage of multi frame rendering; however it doesn't seem to be the case (for now).

Thank you very much for all the hard work; wish you the best.

F

Filippo Marchetti

Known Participant

I'm also noticing that the preview struggles to update in real time, even with very simple files.

It often happens that it takes half a second to see the element I deleted actually disappearing.
From what I'm expperiencing the beta seems to struggle with anything GPU and preview related.
Could I have a confirmation from the development team?

If you require any additional diagnostics, or whatever's needed, please feel free to ask.
I'd love to help the development of this version.

Cheers,
Filippo.

A

Aaron5E27

New Participant

I am looking to install AE Beta on my M1 Max MBP and there is no Beta tab even listed in my CC app. Only Aero Beta appears under "Apps to try" at the bottom of the main page. Please advise - thank you!

D

davidb46026235

Inspiring

It should be "Beta Apps" on the left hand side, under Catgories, the last item before Resource Links.

D

davidb46026235

Inspiring

(make sure you have selected "Apps" at the top left, rather than Files, Discover, or Stock&Marketplace)

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user4771168

New Participant

Hi,

I just started studying adobe after effects using m1 max 16in and I'm wondering when can we get the final release of after-effects on the m1 chip? I believe a lot of creative people are waiting for this update, especially since apple releases the new m1 ultra with their new mac studio.

By the way, I've been using Adobe products for more than a decade now. And I believe you guys are doing amazing work. Great job to the adobe team.

A

adexinc

New Participant

I'm one of those people waiting on this release. That and Element 3D 3.

M

michaelmikecruz

New Participant

same here

D

davidb46026235

Inspiring

Unfortunately, I am not finding good results with the Beta under Rosetta. Currently trying beta 22.4.0 build 17, previews are extremely slow even for very simple compositions until all frames are cached. Running the beta in native apple silicon mode seems to work normally, but this is not an option for users who need access to certain industry standard plugins that are not yet optimized for M1. Even on a factory-reset M1 Pro Max macbook pro (shipped with Monterey), and only Creative Cloud and After effects installed (no third party plugins or other software), previews of a 10 second comp with one HD layer of footage can only preview at 3 to 4 fps until all frames are cached, while the same project previews in real time on intel computers running the current release version of After Effects 22 or 21.

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Hi @davidb46026235,

I believe I just responded to a comment from you on UserVoice, but feel free to answer any of the questions I asked there in this thread. The forums are a much better venue for conversation. I had asked:

Do you experience this slowdown with playback that doesn't involve footage?
Does disabling hardware decode in preferences > Import have any effect? Both of the formats you've mentioned are hardware decoded by default.
Is the footage located on a local disk, external hard drive, or network drive?
Are you using an external monitor? If so, is there any difference when using the laptop screen only?
Is playback of the same clips also slow in Premiere when running under Rosetta?

As we haven't been able to reproduce this behavior on any M1/Pro/Max devices in-house, any information you can offer will be a big help in diagnosing what you are seeing.

Thanks again for any further information you can provide,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team

D

davidb46026235

Inspiring

Hi John,

Thanks for all of your ongoing work! I think I have tracked down the issue, and it may explain why some users are getting things to work when they delete AE preferences but then sometimes have the issue return after further use of After Effects. It looks like the problem arises when in the timeline there is any footage whose color space differs from the project's working space. If the project working space is set to "none" in color settings, the issue goes away. If the footage is re interpreted (via the interpret footage dialog) to be set to a color space that matches the project space, the issue goes away. Or, if the footage item is set to Preserve RGB / disable color management for that item, the issue goes away. But if for example the project working space is set to sRGB and one puts footage in the timeline that is currently interpreted as Rec.709 Gamma 2.4, the slow previews problem occurs when using AE under Rosetta. (This is a common situation when importing mp4 source footage that is automatically interpreted as Rec.709, but one is authoring for sRGB output, particularly since apple displays are in a P3 space.) This behavior can be reproduced in the current Release version 22.2.1 build 3 or Beta version 22.4 x17 under Rosetta on M1 Max monterey 12.3, but does not occur in the same Release version on Intel under Big Sur. I do not have access to an Intel machine running Monterey to test that combination.

S

Steve2176754208nr

Participating Frequently

Are there any known significate performance issues with the current (and perhaps previous one or two) beta builds? I've been using the betas with my M1 MBP 16GB since the start and it's been mostly great but for the past few days I've had to quit and reopen multiple times daily as the application eventually just stops caching frames, and renders via ME take an eternity. Restarting the application fixes the issue temporarily. In each instance where this happens, there is still plenty of disk space available and the cache has not even reached the maximum size limit. Very confused, nothing else has changed with my system or AE preferences.

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