AE it's become a hell of a program

[Mago Fattino]

Hi everyone, can someone please explain to me why AE it's become so slow? I started 15 years ago with v2.0 and it was amazing, for years, I say! Now it's just frustrating as hell, every update it gets worse and worse, I'm wondering why paying so much for an ass program like it's today. I can't understand... 

Check out my screencap video of a project running.
I can't even have a real time preview in quarter resolution (original comp size is 1080p), I'll put my PC specs down below. I have no motion blur activated, no other programs or software running in background, I cleared the cache before recording. If I pause and play a section already cached, it needs to be rendered again... other times if I pause it and start again it take 4 to 5 seconds before starting the preview... that's disgusting.
The project it's really small and light, a bounch of elements with very few effects (some light sweep, puppet tool, color fill) I've done thing way much complicated than this! Everything is compact and well organized with short names and short location path.

The stranger things it's the use of components, CPU is used only around 20%, GPU around 40%, the disk around 5-10%, RAM is 55%. Why!? Why spending money on new hardware then?
I tried with nVidia Studio Driver, it get even worse...

My PC specs:
- Rog Strix Z590-E Gaming Wi-fi
- i9 10900KF 3.70GHz
- 64GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro (2 x 32)

- 1TB Sabrent Rocket SSD NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 (200GB of cache and planty of space)
- Windows 10 Pro

My old PC with a GTX 980 and old CPU works better... I can't say why. Please help me find out.

Thanks

[markoconnell]

You’re right. AE has become a real problem. I’ve been using it since ver 1 and am dismayed at what’s happening. Lately it crashes as a result of stealing all the system memory, a weird chroma flicker has developed, and on top of everything else it often refuses to be hidden with command-H. What a pain.


Mark O’Connell

[Mylenium]

I started 15 years ago with v2.0 and it was amazing, for years, I say!

That's unlikely. The actual v2 is more like over 20 years ago and AE7, which you presumably mean, wasn't even officially called CS2, even though it was packaged with various CS2 suites. Just sayin'... That said of course we all can agree that AE these days is a veritable mess in so many ways. Your screen recording seems to drive home the point of the sub-par GPU acceleration not working and potential caching issues. Of course one could tell you to check those things, but I guess you already knew that...

Mylenium

[markoconnell]

Mylenium- The fact that he started working in with AE fifteen years doesn't mean he couldn't have been working with v2.

[Warren Heaton]

How does After Effects behave if you disable all third-party addons and plugins?  

[Warren Heaton]

@markoconnell 

Sure, 15 years ago someone could have been running After Effects version 2, but not under Windows.

[DVSth]

I have a Macbook Pro M2 Max 96 Gigs of Ram and it can not even perform 2D work without the RAM spiking to 90% usage and crashing. It dies just trying to render text with 2 simple animaitors applied. I have spent 3 days trying to trouble shoot it - even downgrading and everything. 

Had to resort back to my 13 yr old PC to get the job completed. 

Not one Adobe Rep can assist. 

[markoconnell]

I've been having crashes as well because all the system memory is somehow taken. I'm at the point where I purge memory and disk cache before attempting anything.

[Warren Heaton]

@DVSth 

Sorry to hear that you're having unexpected performance issues.  After Effects should run pretty well on your MacBook Pro.

Do you have a project that you can share?

I could try to reproduce the issue on my 32GB/1TB M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Having others be able to reproduce the issue is key to getting unexpected performance issues resolved quickly.

[DVSth]

How would i be ablet to share a project to you? 

[Andrew Yoole]

Just post a project file as an attachment in this thread.  I'm currently using the same machine - MBP M2 Max with 96GB RAM - and not experiencing any obvious issues.  I find Apple silicon to be pretty incredible during the design phase in AE, the timeline is so smooth and responsive.  (Although I do seem to have regular Dynamic Link issues when sending the AE Render Queue to AME.) Lets see if we can reproduce your issue on my machine.

[DVSth]

I actually don't have an option in the tool bar above to attach files to the thread... the most I can post is a photo... Am i missing something or looking in the wrong place? 

Thanks for offering to help. 

[DVSth]

I've tried several different browsers - still can't find the option to upload a project file. 

[Andrew Yoole]

That's very strange.  I don't get the attachment dialog in this thread either, but you can see the OP posted an attachment, and I can still post attachemnts in other threads.  I wonder if there's a file size limitation per thread?  Anyway, in the meantime, can you maybe post a Dropbox, Google Drive  or WeTransfer link?

[DVSth]

Sorry, no option to upload a project file to the threas so I thought I would provide some details. 

My Spec's are as follows: MBPro M2 Max
96 GB of RAM 
4TB Internal 
macOS Ventura 13.4.1

Using AE (Version 23.5.0 Build 52) for 2D work basically, using animator for text in a 1920x1080 Comp and that's about it. AE is absorbing 87/ 92% of my RAM - CPU isn't even being touched really and its extrememly slow chugging throuhg the timeline trying to get through rendering the green bars for simple annimations using tracking and opacity. Its crazy how slow it is. 

I took the same project over to my 13 years old pc - and its didn't even flinch. Blew through the the renders like nothing. 

Side Note for AE Settings are as followed: 
Media & Disk Cache settings are: 
Maximum Dish Cache Size: 100GB 

Memory & Performace 
Installed Ram 96GB
RAM reserved for other applications: 25GB
RAM acailable for AE: 71GB 
:ballot_box_with_check: Enable Multi-Frame Rendering 
% CPU Reserved for other applications 21% 

Project Settings: 
Mercury Software Only 

Using: Open Rosetta is un-checked. 

Cache frames when idle is also un-checked 

Preview is set to Half 

Hope this provides some insight. 

[DVSth]

Okay, good idea - I'll do google drive 👍

[DVSth]

Her is a link to the Google Drive Project Files  

[Andrew Yoole]

I tried your project and there's nothing that seems to concern me.  The timeline is nice and responsive.  It started rendering a preview after 10 secs of no use, which is normal, created a full res preview of the whole timeline in just over 30 seconds.  I rendered the item in your Render Queue (that had rendered for you in 38 seconds).  Mine took almost twice that, 1 min 9 secs.  Rendering to ProRes, rather than H264, made no difference to the render time.

I then transcoded your source video files from H264 to ProRes 422 and replaced them in the project.  This reduced the render time by 1 second - woo hoo!  The thinking is that Apple silicon has hardware encoders and decoders for ProRes - but it hasn't made a significant difference in this example.

But I'm not experiencing any unusual slowdowns, shutdowns or crashes, like you've suggested.  I'm not sure what else I can suggest, sorry, other than maybe a clean OS install?

[DVSth]

Wow - I tried a clean install 😞 

My timeline is just peaking out with RAM and bogging down. I can't beleive this. I'll provide some screen shots in hopes you see something that might be doing wrong.

[Warren Heaton]

@DVSth 

I opened your project and it seems to work as I would expect.  Here's a screen recording: https://f.io/TTQV7Cdd

MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021

Apple M1 Max

32GB RAM

macOS Ventura 13.4.1

After Effects 2023 version 23.5

As inconvenient as it is to do so, you may need to do a clean install of macOS, Creative Cloud Desktop and After Effects.  Then run your project to test it, then add other software back, then test your project again.  As you go, hopefully you'l find whatever is causing the diminished performance.

[DVSth]

Thanks so much for providing the screen shot and taking time to help. Ill do another clean install and work my way through to see if i can find the problem causing the Ram to spike and crash AE.