AE super slow in M1 Max Macbook Pro 2022 - What am I doing wrong?

[johneh5FC4]

I was using AE on a 16GB RAM Quad Core Windows laptop - Moved to Macbook 2022 M1 Max chip and expected a butter smooth workflow with superfast previews and rendering in Mencoder. Alas! I was fooled! 10 seconds of a composition takes forever to playback in even Quarter resolution, keeps caching. Rendering is even slower. My windows laptop handled the same project comparably well. What am I doing wrong?

[Rick Gerard]

I'm also on an M1 Macbook Pro, and it's great. What version of AE are you using? What is in the comp? What are the frame size and frame rate? What are your Preferences and Project settings? 

I have Mercury GPU turned on in the Project settings (Shift + Option + Command + k).

I have Preferences/Media and Disk Cache (Option + Command + 😉 set to only 40GB, so it will clear faster, and my internal storage is about 75% full, Preferences/Video Preview set to Enable Mercury Transmit, Preferences/Memory & Performance set to 4 GB for other apps because the OS hates memory allocations that are not even multiples of 4 GB, Enable Multi Frame Rendering is on, and I have 10% of the CPU allocated for other applications. 

My comp panel is almost always set to Auto, I work mostly with 4K footage from professional gear, and I avoid, reinterpret or transcode footage that is highly compressed or variable frame rate (from a phone). I have the entire Boris FX suite, the entire Reg Giant (Maxon) suite, all of the Video Copilot effects, and about 60 scripts and extensions. Everything I have has been updated to M1 compatibility except AE Flame from AEScsripts.com and Knoll Light Factory. I hardly ever use either of them, but if I need them, I can open AE using Rosetta.

Check those settings, and make sure that your boot drive has plenty of room. Don't run any unnecessary apps while you are working in AE, (Web Browsers can be a tremendous resource hog on some websites). Check your Activity Monitor for bottlenecks. If you use external drives for media, make sure they are solid state and Thunderbolt 3 or 4 compatible. Make sure you don't use cheap cables for your external drives. A USB-C cable has about 1/10 the bandwidth of a good Thunderbolt 4 cable.

Let us know what you figure out. 

[johneh5FC4]

Hi Rick, 
I am not a really heavy AE user, I work with Graphics mostly. I use AE primarily to: 

1. Trim and Edit webinar recordings
2. Create 10-60 second long animations (Logo openers, intro texts, title slides etc) 
3. Add music to video

So I am not that heavy when it comes to scripts and other fancy stuff. When I was rendering a 50 minute video from AE via Media Encoder, my windows laptop with 16g RAM did it in 72 minutes. The same video takes close to 4 hours in my macbook. I enabled all best settings available across google. 

Similarly, a 10 second long logo opener, used to take 5-10 minutes tops in my windows laptop. In the mac, 20-30 minutes. This is frustrating! My most recent rendering in ME, the entire video is 9 seconds long. Already 13 minutes have gone. It sill needs 8-10 more mins. 

[Joost van der Hoeven]

For point 1 and 3 I really suggest to look at Premiere Pro. Ae has to re-render your full webinar recording, whereas Pr doesn't need to re-render anything that your haven't touched.

[Rick Gerard]

After Effects is one of the worst audio editing applications I have ever used. Premiere Pro or Audition is a much better tool to use to add music to video.

[johneh5FC4]

Appreciate your advise and guidance, though. My fullest gratitude! 

[johneh5FC4]

New surprise! Dragging the playhead and previewing a small animation sequence (45 secs, 16 layers, a few dozen keyframes, no 3D) is super laggy. Frustrated to the core! Is problem with AE or macbook itself? Here is my mac spec. 

[Kevin2455631005kl]

Wow 😮 even with 64GB, I don't get it!

[FG30610994r054]

Hey Rick – first and foremost thanks so much for your tips! i have the same problem of OP, and I'm running AE on a MB Pro 14-inch 2023 M2 Pro 16GB RAM with the settings you suggested, and it's still lagging extremely. I checked the comp and there's no weird scripts, just a couple of masks and all. Is it because of the RAM? Do you think upgrading to a M2 Max 32GB RAM would make the difference?

[Rick Gerard]

I almost always run previews with the Comp resolution set to Auto. If you have a 4K comp and the Default workspace, that will give you a comp magnification size of 50%, so the render time will be cut by four times.  Set the Comp Magnification ratio to 33 or 25%, and your preview times will be reduced even more. If the comp is incredibly complex, I will also set the Preview Panel to skip 1 or more frames. If your comp is 60 fps, setting the Preview panel to skip a frame is also a good idea. The only reason for a real-time preview is to see if the blocking (composition of the elements) and the movement works well. If you need to check fine details on a frame, set the magnification ratio to 100 or even 200% and just check the Hero frames. 

Believe it or not, that's how the major visual effects and animation studios work. Nobody tries to run full-resolution previews of complex composites or animations to see if the shot works. It used to be that Pixar's final render time goal was seven minutes a frame. They would never get anything done if they waited for full-resolution, full-effects previews.  Call it a pencil test if you like. Animators have been running pencil tests for a century before they do Ink and Paint and turn the completed frames into a movie.

[Jean5E07]

i have the same problem and can not preview more than 2 frame. so sad........ really regard to update the sysyem and AE 2022