422 LT playback insanely slow

[Bobby22786819cgu2]

I have a very capable 16" 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. It, in Quicktime, has zero issues playing ProRes 422 LT 16-bit footage at very fast speeds. I can't get it to drop any frames when scrubbing through, even though the footage is 4K DCI footage. This is not the case in After Effects at all. When trying to play back the exact same clips in the program with NO effects added, just the regular, untouched video, it can't even play back more than 1 frame per second. I'm serious, it takes almost half a minute for it to process one second of footage at ANY resolution/downsample. Literally, downsampling to a quatre resolution does nothing, it takes the same amount of time to play as full resolution does. Why does After Effects struggle so much to playback this footage? It's not hard for the computer at all, or any other video editing/effects software I have, JUST After Effects. Are there any settings I should change to make playing this back smoother, or is this all just a lost cause?

[Justin T - Hyper Brew]

Is the file on an external drive or internal drive? What kind of effects are you adding that's slowing it down so much? ProRes should be fast, I'd try a few different formats and see how they compare.

[Bobby22786819cgu2]

The file is not on an external drive, it is saved directly to my Mac's SSD. I am not adding any effects whatsoever, the footage plays at that extremely slow speed as soon as it's placed in a composition. The footage plays back at full speed on every other app I have except After Effects.

[Justin T - Hyper Brew]

After Effects doesn't playback video in realtime generally, but it is getting faster and more GPU-accelerated over time. Use Premiere Pro to edit and then use After Effects for specific shots.

[Bobby22786819cgu2]

I wouldn't use Premiere Pro if you paid me to. I hate virtually every Adobe app except After Effects. I think you missunderstand me when I say "there are no effects on the shot." I'm not saying I'm editing in After Effects, I'm saying BEFORE I even apply effects, the playback is insanely slow. It just gets worse once I add effects. I would never dream of using After Effects to edit my videos. I'm purely using it for effects, (and now not even this scene anymore because it can't play back anything, whereas DaVinci Resolve Studio is handling this footage perfectly, AND doing a better job at keying.)

[Warren Heaton]

For what it's worth, most After Effects users would not dream of using After Effects for editing video, either.  It's motion graphics and compositing, not non-linear editing.

If you're getting good results in Resolve, by all means use it.

[Warren Heaton]

After Effects treats all footage as if it's uncompressed and is only as powerful as the computer we run it on.  

A machine that's fully optimized for After Effects can be somewhate expensive (more here: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/hardware-recommendations.html).

Fortunatey, AE provides several options to customize playback in the Preivew tab so that we can work faster even with a modest desktop/laptop.  Try lower resolutions and skipping frames for quicker previews.

[JohnColombo]

Hi @Bobby22786819cgu2,

Thank you for reporting this, sorry to see you're experiencing poor playback of this footage. You've mentioned that you're using an M1 Max, so presumably, you are running AE until Rosetta emulation? You may get better performance in the Beta version of After Effects which runs natively on Apple silicon. If you can, try downloading After Effects (Beta) from the Beta section of the Creation Cloud app and see if this same footage is slow to playback in the latest Beta builds.

Another option: see if disabling Multi-Frame Rendering in the Preferences ( under Memory & Performance ) has any impact on footage playback. We've had some reports of this and are still investigating, but it would be great to know if this has any impact on your issue. Additionally, would you be able to share the problematic footage with us? If so, we can contact you directly to facilitate transferring the file privately.

Thanks again for reporting and for any further information,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team

[Warren Heaton]

I was able to reproduce this with an 8192-by-4320 ProRes LT clip as well as a 3840-by-2160 ProRes LT clip under Windows 11 with After Effects 22.2 and 18.4.1 on an HP Omen with 16GB of RAM, RTX 2070, and an SSD internal drive.

The original clip is an 8192-by-4320 .CRM clip from a Canon R5.  Transcoded to HQ or Proxy, it behaves pretty well.  Transcoded to LT, After Effects becomes non-responsive with a dimmed screen and the mouse turning into a spinning wheel.  It seems to clear after some wait time but is very, very laggy afterward.  AE 18.4.1 seems to recover sooner than 22.2.

The same LT clips behave as expected under macOS 11.6 with AE 22.2 on an M1 Mac mini (16GB/2TB) and a 2017 iMac Pro (64GB/2TB).

The HQ transcode is 30GB, the LT is 13GB and the Proxy is 6GB.

- Warren