After Effects 24.0 EXTREMELY slow

[Bruno T. Augusto]

I don't know if everyone is having this problem, but After Effects is absolutely impossible to work. I'm working using simple shapes, a gradient layer and a text layer. And After Effects is just slow with something so simple like that. Inside the program, the mouse movement gets really laggy, it takes forever to render. And I'm not using external files, I'm not using adjustment layers and I'm not using any Motion Blur.

I'm feeling After Effects is getting worse and worse on each version Adobe release. And there's no way the problem is my computer, since I'm using a Mac Studio with M1 Max, 64Gb RAM and 4T storage. I can't find a resonable explanation for all this lag on every project.

Honestly, I'm starting to think about migrating to another software, since Adobe seems to just ignore all the After Effects problems.

[֑nubnubbud]

Yeeeah...

I use CS6 now. I yelled at them till they gave me one of the installs they took back in 2014. It's working way smoother. Not 24fps mind you, but 18 on playback. After Effects CS6 is definitely the best option as a legacy editor- less performance reduction on new hardware, lower minimum spec, faster GPU usage... AE 2015 would be the definitive version-the last with a performance boost, but they shot that in the foot when they decided to make using older versions literally illegal as per the contract.

I love layer based editing, but i can't use AE at all any more. It has basically no new industry standard functionality, and no new hardware functionality... but the managers at adobe tell the devs to make the keyframes colorful and it keeps the shareholders clapping and makes number go up in imaginary money land.

I only use it to access my old comps. I avoid it for new ones because it's unreliable and unusable, and doesn't work with today's standards anyway

[֑nubnubbud]

@GotChaDigi 

Davinci resolve has an alternative for rotobrush. It's free. You'll need to pay if you want Nuke's offering, their free version only includes the basics.

[InfiniteWhale]

I hope they're having crisis meetings about fixing this broken old app before everyone jumps ship.  They definitely should be 

[dlmease]

I had this same issue with version 24.2. Everything worked great until a day or two ago. Now I can't move a text block or even a basic shape on an new empty project. I have auto-update on so not sure if the app updated automatically. Reinstalled version 23.6.2 and it works fine. 

I'll try installing an earlier version of 24 to see if that makes a differece.

[dlmease]

Apple M1, 16 GB, Sonoma 14.3.1

[Check33614808tqvl]

This really needs to be fixed. The simplest tasks are buggy. 

[elzenberg]

Like many I am facing similar issues. It's hard to work on small projects smoothly, and when it comes to longer ones, my computer lags so much that it's impossible to work. To "overcome" this problem, I have to start new projects and break them down into smaller parts, even though I'ts hard to work. I'm not using any fancy effects; most of the work is done on simple objects and masks. 

For a long time, I thought the issue was with my PC and was hoping that buying a new one would solve it, but now I'm really disappointed, that is not a case. What are good alterantives to Adobe, especialy AE?

i7-7700; 32 GB RAM, GTX 1060 6GB, 1T storage

Recently I cleaned and added a new thermal paste.   

[Javier34030498omkf]

Same problem here.

I tried in two differents computer, mac and windows both whit 8GB  dedicated video graphics, everything is so slow for expample:

When I cut a layer the program last 6 or 7 seconds to show the instructions,  also for move the intro outro marks, horrible.

I dont know what is happening, both computers have 32 GB RAM and SSD disk. No plugins, No third-party plugins installed/panels open. All aplications closed.

[jenkmeister]

Can you capture a screen recording when it is happening? Or share a project that we can attempt to reproduce the problem with? 

[FritzU]

Same here, 24.1 is basically unusable as it is, playback is choppy even when rendered and the cursors lags when using the program. Its catastrophic. Using an M1 Studio Ultra 128 GB Ram

[jenkmeister]

We have M1 Ultras on the development and QE team and are not reproducing this choppyness. Are you able to screen record your experience so we can take a look at what's going on?

[HunchoDreams]

Not to be rude but you would really benefit using a more recent processor and possibly faster ram.

[֑nubnubbud]

@HunchoDreams With all due respect, my computer is from 2017 and works better than his does. Newer computers typically work better because they're stronger, but AE typically has very poor scaling with anything but processor speeds and single core transistor counts, in a time when we're getting more, smaller cores, stronger GPU's, and not much faster CPU's. and the addition of a built in GPU takes up some of the space that AE could use for CPU cores to render one more frame at the same time (not rendering the next frame faster, AE isn't multithreaded for consistent framerates, we don't need that, right?).

With slightly less respect, those graphs are intel CPU's, which have been a joke for efficiency and overheating since the 12000 series and he's using an M1, not an intel chip... Ironically, Apple sells their machines as a creator platform, and AE struggles on it. Adobe advertises their programs as running on apple machines, though since AE22 there have been nonstop stability issues on apple platforms, and since AE2016, performance issues throughout. 

[HunchoDreams]

@֑nubnubbud Just to clarify, my comment was directed at another user, not the original poster. They were discussing their setup, which includes an i7-7700 processor, 32 GB RAM, and a GTX 1060 6G, and how it benefits from quicksync hardware acceleration. As for me, I'm still getting the hang of this Adobe community forum layout.

Regarding my experience, I haven't used Adobe After Effects on my M1 MAX Macbook Pro (with 32GB RAM, 1TB internal storage, and a 2TB external SSD for cache) since I built my PC a few months back. However, I did notice that AE seemed more stable on MacOS, probably owing to better support for ProRes and ProRes Raw. I do wish Adobe would add ProRes hardware acceleration for CUDA in AE, but I'm not too hopeful. This skepticism is based on the lack of stability I've observed with ProRes Raw in AE on Windows, as evidenced by numerous unresolved discussions over the years. Currently, I'm using a Ryzen 9 7950x with an RTX 4080, 96GB of RAM @6400, and a 2TB M.2 drive dedicated solely for caching. Performance-wise, it feels comparable to my previous setup.

[Yassin35706989yzg3]

Same me and friend have been having the same issue in all the adobe different apps from Premiere Pro to After Effects,

is anyone else having the same issue with the apps recentlky and if not can ianyone help, ive been trying to work and evertime it crashes after a few minutes.

[Jonas33876031tfki]

113%(?!) cpu - thats a lot!!! 😛

[Javier34030498omkf]

Hello, I finally recorded my screen.

I identify two specific problems:

1. Adobe dynamic link between Premire and After Effects cannot be used correctly, error is shown in the video.

2. "After Effects" does not work smoothly, as you can see in the video, basic actions like cutting a layer, playing or setting the space for preview work slow, each action takes about 4 seconds or more, even if I work in Resolution 1/4. I also opened the specifications of my computer, I have enough free space on my SSD, I have an 8-core Intel Xenon W processor, 32 GB RAM. In more than ten years using the suite I have never found myself in this situation.

This example is in mac, but also I experiment the same problem in my PC. 

Can we get an old version? Maybe in 2023 or 2022, I really need to work, guys.

In this link I uploaded more images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16e-aiI1kolKFBLlgl6a_61boR-kXAmB4?usp=sharing

Thank you!

[cathyd23090491]

Yup. That's happening to me. I'm working exclusively with text and shape layers. No fancy effects. MacStudio, M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 48-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine 64GB unified memory 1TB SSD storage. MacOS Sonoma 14.3.1. Keep emptying cache, restarting machine, closing other apps, but makes no difference. I can't get anything done, the lag is insane.

[jenkmeister]

@cathyd23090491 Any chance you can screen record what you see. I'm not really sure what to attribute, "the lag is insane" too. So it may help to see a recording of what you're experiencing. 

[BRDy]

This issue is costing me three days of my work time and I've tried it all. I change the memory settings, rolled back to previous versions of the software and repeated those steps. I've even done a full clean OS install and AE re-install resetting preferences and trying again and I'm getting the same system out of memory error every time I render. In Media Encoder, it will complete 1 clip and then hang on the second requiring a force quit.

its bloody tiring and is the latest in a line of issues over the last couple years with after effects and adobe in particular.

[jenkmeister]

@BRDy Are you running 24.2.1 or 24.3 or 24.4 Beta? Are you running other Adobe apps at the same time? If you use Purge, does it help. What are the specs on your machine? 

[BRDy]

MacBook Pro, M2 Pro, 32GBs RAM, 1TB SSD. Working drive is an 4TB TB4 SSD, Rendering to another 4TB TB4 SSD.

At first: I was running 24.2.1 on macOS Sonoma. Got the error message. Tried rendering comps through Media Encoder, they hung and lead to a force quit. Activity monitor showed the same memory issues there.

Fix steps were to change the Memory settings to multiples of 4GBs, so I set it to 4GBs. And the same issues happened, tried 8GBs. I got the same issues. So, I opened a new project and imported the old one, and got the same issues across the same memory settings.

i save a new copy of the project to 23.x

installed After Effects 23.6.2 and Media Encoder 23.6.4.

Same issues, same fix steps, and same issues.

i shut down and tried all of these steps all over again... Same issues.

i shut down did a clean install of macOS, this time Ventura 13.6.5.

installed After Effects 23.6.2, Media Encoder 23.6.4.., Got the same issues, took the same fix steps, same issues.

installed AE 24.1 and ME 24.2.1... Same issues.

repeated same fix steps, same issues.

I've had to bring all of my work into premier, and recreate it there and instead of exporting the clips I needed, I'm exporting all of the clips I needed from a single timeline, into one file... And it seems to be working... From Premier.

i was conforming and grading multiple clips I need to share with collaborators across different projects leveraging the same assets so they have to match... And I've lost three days doing this work around and troubleshooting.

even after a clean install, I'm getting all of the same issues with after effects.

please don't make me have to switch to Final Cut, resolve and motion.

[BRDy]

For contrast, rendering within Premier, works. Rendering from Premier into Media Encoder, works.

I tested rendering the same volume from Topaz Video AI, just to see if there were issues... And there were none, it worked.

i had recreated the same work I did in After Effects in a new After Effects project, twice, and all of the same rendering issues in After Effects and rendering After Effects compositions in Media Encoder, failed, each time.

This all seams like a really big issue with the After Effects render engine, but I'm not a dev. Just a life-long user that can't afford these ongoing issues with a tool I love 🙂

[jenkmeister]

@BRDy Thank you for all the details. The conforming and grading work - is that using any 3rd party plugins or just native plugins in AE? 

[BRDy]

Also, no, not running multiple applications. I've tested all of this bot with a browser and email client open, then close and only After Effevts and only Media Encoder running.

the first thing I close when that message forst came up were other applications and background processes.