AE preview NOT working at all - not even a little on M1 16GB 2T Macbook Pro

Hi there, I have an issue with AE preview, which until now worked perfectly fine, but since the last few updates doesn't seem to work at all - does not even load a second or two of a 1920x1080 project file. I started thinking it's the computer power issue but that can't be it, because I animated project files that were 8k pixels perfectly fine last year, I didn't even notice I worked in such high resolution until it started slightly lagging. Also when I bought M1 computer there wasn't even an AE version for M1 so it was running through the emulator and still worked seamlessly with the 8k files - so I am really lost on how it can't even give me a second of a quarter preview of a Full HD file.

So to be working on a cartoon that has lower pixel files and for it to not to be loading even a quarter preview is ridiculous. I cleared caches, I checked the preview settings, I made space on the computer, I reinstalled all the apps, restarted but it still doesn't load anything.

Can somebody give me another idea or could this issue please be fixed in the next update? 

Thanks!