AE performance is randomly poor

[curt.gallery]

I know tons of stuff is created daily with AE that is far more complicated than what I am doing. I have a new Mac, tons of hardrive space etc... Randomly it just does not play previews for long periods of time. Sometimes it just never sends the file to Media Encoder. How do you all deal with this? Is there some special sauce I do not know about? I am a seasoned design professional and I have tried everything imaginable. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

HI Curtis,

Thanks for the message. I'm Kevin from Adboe Support, one of the moderators here. Has this ever happened before with this setup or is this recent? What kind of footage is it? If it is from a mobile device, have you tried transcoding the footage? Also, have you tried purging cache? Sometimes resetting preferences can help. Have you tried that? I hope the community can assist you. Sorry for the hassle.

Thanks,
Kevin

[curt.gallery]

Thanks for the response. It seems to be related to the latest update. I opened the file on my laptop with 25.2, I updated to 25.2.2 figuring it was such a small increment and it lost all my footage and refuses to connect them, even when I do a direct file replace. it is like it is stuck. I have restarted purged all the cache possible. Retarted my computer. Same thing. It will not send the files to the media encoder either. I am working off my laptop as I have a deadline. I am downgrading my Macmini AE version now to see if that will fix it. 

[curt.gallery]

It did not lose all my footage but at least half of it and no matter what I did including trying to import it again, worked. Replacing did not work either.  MacOS 15.4 (24E248) M2 Pro chip

[curt.gallery]

Yep, downgrading AE to 25.2 fixed it on my mac mini. 

[Warren Heaton]

@curt.gallery 

The Preview issue sounds like something going on with RAM.  I would run the Apple Hardware Test and then try running After Effects in Safe Mode.  Hopefully, the hardware is fine and you just need to update or remove a third-party plug-in.

The issue with not being able to export via Media Encoder is likely something to do with Dynamic Link not being able to launch or run as expected in the background.  Does it work if you drag and drop a Comp from the After Effects Project tab to the Media Encoder Queue tab?  Also, did you happen to use Migration Assistant when you set your Mac mini up for the first time?  I've had two friends run into unexpected issues with Adobe applications when they did that.  One was able to get it resolved with a support chat (it took about two hours) and the other did a clean install of macOS, restored user settings and documents from Time Machine, but did a clean install of Adobe Creative Cloud and the corresponding applications (that took about a half day).

Sorry to hear you're having trouble.  Things should be running smoother.  Issues come up now and again on my workstations, but I'm using After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro to crank out graphics for broadcast on a daily basis.