After Effects 2015 won't preview in real time after El Capitan update.

[AMAX]

Hello,

Has anyone experienced the following issue and found a solution for it?

Right after Update to El Capitan 10.11 the After Effects 2015 stopped ram previewing in real time.

No matter what i do it won’t work.

I have a latest MAC Pro 2.7 GHz 12-Core with 64GB ram.

The AE 2014 still works though.

[alexc16240493]

Hi there! I know is a pain but is what it is, since the big guys doesn't release a proper fix we have to make the most out of our machines.

I have tried to have full screen Compo panel in one monitor the rest of Ae Layout on the main one and it works fine for me. (always Timeline panel smaller than usual)

I believe the problem comes from the timeline, I guess is something to do with the interface rendering not using properly the sys resources.

I have tried in a Mac Pro 32gb ram iMac i7 32gbram and macbook pro i7 16gbram in non of them works fluidly with the standard layout. You have to make the Timeline panel smaller and then it flights.

[RStachelek]

Yes I am experiencing the same issue with AE 13.7 after updating to Mac OS 10.11.3

MacPro 12 core, 64Gb RAM

[Szalam]

RStachelek wrote:

Yes I am experiencing the same issue with AE 13.7 after updating to Mac OS 10.11.3

Does Todd's post address your issue? Re: After Effects 2015 won't preview in real time after El Capitan update.

[mofxtv]

So I might have found a "better" temporary fix. (I'm on AE 13.7 along with El Capitan and had been using the tilde key to maximize the preview window.)

THE (workaround) FIX:

Open the Render Queue and drag it below the timeline. Haven't done much experimenting, but having the Render Queue below the timeline allows me to preview in real-time again. If I close the Render Queue, the lags starts again.

[nielheesakkers-3E0oUt]

Ok, I don't know why but it works for me!

THX!!!

[leosfreitas]

Wow!! It really works here too. I'm following this forum for many weeks and you bring the best temporary solution. I'm afraid that Adobe don't broke this "solution" in next update...LOL.

[Keitto]

Your solution is the best! Nice save!

[StephaneA_AfterEffects]

This workaround is NOT working all the time. Sometimes it plays realtime sometimes (often) it does not.

I've notice that it is working better when the view panel is selected when you do a ram preview rather than the timeline panel.

[Estebee]

Make sure you let it render the work area fully, then once it's done it should run at full FPS till you make any further edits within that work area.  However, I would say that whilst the workaround does get you full FPS eventually, the rendering (or whatever it's doing when it cycles through the frames on first pass) does seem to be often extremely, painfully slow on basic motion over a few seconds.  I mean, like, low single digit fps sometimes.  Once Adobe finally actually report this bug and fix it, they should release some benchmark information so we know what we're dealing with.

Oh, and I notice that we still no official notification or alert from Adobe about this -  they're still letting their valued customers waste their time and money wrestling with the issue before finally ending up on this thread.  Classy.

[StephaneA_AfterEffects]

"Make sure you let it render the work area fully, then once it's done it should run at full FPS"

That's what I did. As I said I have noticed though that when an other panel than the timeline's one is selected when you do a ram preview the workaround works often but not always.

More over the 2 secondes missing audio during the first playback bug is still there. This "workaround" doesn't fix it.

[Szalam]

Estebe wrote:

Oh, and I notice that we still no official notification or alert from Adobe about this -  they're still letting their valued customers waste their time and money wrestling with the issue before finally ending up on this thread.  Classy.

This is a terrible bug and it shouldn't be here in a professional app. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. The new architecture in CC 2015 is taking a while to get worked out. Too long in my opinion.

Adobe has acknowledged the problem here and in other threads. They've not only acknowledged it, but they've given us information about what the issue is, ways to work around it, and when we should expect a fix. It's also the first bug mentioned on the official AE team blog post about El Capitan (After Effects and Character Animator ready for Mac OS X v10.11).

What other sort of notification or alert could they do? They're not going to send out a mass email. I mean, as much as you and I may use AE our whole day long, it's a tiny part of Adobe's business. If they cared about it and if it were an important part of their business, the AE team wouldn't be so small (and we wouldn't be having issues like this or the I/O problems in the first place). And, out of that tiny slice of their business, only about half are using Macs (53%, in Motionographer's poll, as I recall). And out of that portion, only some people are using El Capitan (most post houses that I know are still running Mavericks or earlier). So, a mass email to their entire user base is pretty much out since this bug would affect less than 1% of their customers (probably way less than 1%, but I'm just guessing here).

Now, an alert through the Creative Cloud app would be great! The app would know what OS it's running on and what apps are installed. That way they could message everyone trying to run AE on El Capitan and point them to this thread or the blog post or something. The Illustrator team could warn folks about the NVIDIA crashing issue too. This is actually a really good idea we have here. Too bad Adobe hasn't thought of implementing that sort of functionality... Or maybe they have thought about it, but nixed the idea. Who knows? Anyway, I'm going to suggest it!

[Estebee]

You've answered your own question, I see.  You simply shouldn't have to suggest basic app support like this - and Adobe's method of treating it's users like freeware subscribers is insulting.

[StephaneA_AfterEffects]

"Adobe's method of treating it's users like freeware subscribers is insulting"

Estebe, you are perfectly right. I couldn't agree more.

[Szalam]

Estebe wrote:

You've answered your own question, I see.

Yup!

I sent that suggestion in as a feature request because I think it would be really helpful for them to have that option. If the AE team could have messaged people saying that CC 2015 was a major change and should be considered in beta, people would not be nearly as frustrated as they were when it launched. If the AE team could message folks who are running El Capitan about this bug, it would have prevented several pages of this thread and much frustration.

Estebe wrote:

You simply shouldn't have to suggest basic app support like this - and Adobe's method of treating it's users like freeware subscribers is insulting.

I agree. It seems like they're still trying to figure out the whole CC thing, but they've been doing it for a few years now. It has great potential (as does the re-architecture of After Effects), but it's just not where it should be yet.

[DuncanDoughnutz]

Holy Shit! I can't believe this worked!!! Thank you so much for posting this work around. It makes 2015 usable again and it also works in 2014. Although it make me wonder if redrawing the timeline is actually the issue since this works with the timeline fully present.

EDIT: It seems to work with any panel you put under the Timeline. I have Libraries down there with only the name showing and I am getting real-time playback in both 2014 and 2015.

[Stefan_Boeker]

works also for me.  Unbelievable!

But it is as if someone would say, "put a rabbit's foot on your screen and AE will work properly."

What a crappy software...

[DuncanDoughnutz]

It actually doesn't have to be the Render Queue. It seems like any panel docked under the timeline will work. I currently have the Libraries panel docked under it, as I never use that panel, which free up my often used Render Queue.

[y a p p]

Absolutely fantastic, I've been trying to fix this problem for 2 days now. I have talked to multiple Adobe techs through Chat and I have had them take control of my computer to try and troubleshoot this problem and none of them had any clue.

This worked for me, how strange??? But, they seriously need to fix this problem - because the audio playback is so bad it's useless and cannot be used professionally.

Thank you!

[Roei Tzoref · Accepted solution]

Everybody who is having this issue please install the latest update: After Effects CC (November 2017) Bug-Fix Update Is Now Available that is supposed to finally close this thread for good! please report if this issue has been resolved.

if you can't see the update yet, wait a while until you see it. try relaunching Creative Cloud app by typing Ctrl+Alt+R. I see it.

this update is 14.0.1 and is a bug fix for many disturbing issues especially for Mac users. it does not fix all the bugs that are new with this release - look here for bug#2 and #3 that are still not fixed (bug #1 is fixed I believe): Known issues in After Effects CC 2017 and hopefully a bug fix for those will come pretty soon.

[freekorps]

This appears to have fixed it. Thank goodness.

[y a p p]

Thank you, that fixed it. But, I had to sign out of Creative Cloud and sign back in, in order for the updates to appear. That's another little nuisance as well. Creative Cloud doesn't dynamically update, so you don't know if there are app updates unless you sign out and sign back in. Either way, the update fixed the problem - thank god. That was a major bug, how did they miss that??

[Szalam]

YAPP wrote:

That was a major bug, how did they miss that??

It wasn't so much that they missed it; the issue was more that it was very hard to make a fix for the bug. The bug was due to a change Apple made in their OS somewhat late in the development of AE's new architecture and the bug wasn't happening on every system. It was a hugely annoying/work stopping issue for some people on Macs, but it didn't affect others. And, when CC 2015 first came out, there were bunches of other bugs that muddied the waters. That sort of scenario (not affecting all systems, lots of other similar bugs) makes it hard to figure out. Once they pinned down the actual cause, it took a while to figure out how to code a fix that wouldn't break other things too. If you noticed in a previous release, they tried putting a thin white line at the bottom of the AE UI which fixed the issue or made it less bad for some people bot not others.

If you want to get really technical, the issue boiled down to the way MacOS 10.11 changed how redraw rectangles are calculated when they intersect the region at the bottom of the application window between the rounded corners, which forced After Effects to invalidate how it was re-drawing the timeline and then draw a much bigger region than expected, which slowed down the refresh rate during previews. It took them a few tries to find the correct math that would refresh just the area needed.

If that doesn't make sense it's because I don't fully understand it either.

Also, the AE team may be a bit larger now than they were then, but they're still a surprisingly small team of people. This picture from the After Effects World Conference in 2014 shows nearly the entire team at the time, including software engineering, quality engineering, marketing, UI design, and product management. So, there are limited resources in play too. Plus management probably has different goals than the engineers do. (I really fault the Adobe corporate folks for how bad this was a lot more than the AE team on this one. Adobe should have made this sort of bug a lot more clear upon release and should have called attention to AE's new architecture and should NOT have made the CC app automatically remove older versions...)

Anyway, they couldn't just not release AE due to a bug that affected a minority of people. Since CC includes old versions, it wouldn't stop anybody from working if they just stuck with the stable version...

I dunno, it must have been a tough call. They may have underestimated the number of users it would affect. I really don't know. I just use the software and try to help others do the same! All I know is the AE team has been working really hard to fix this bug without breaking other things and I'm really glad they did it!!!

[y a p p]

Wow, thank you for the detailed response.

I actually did find a workaround for this issue yesterday, which makes sense after reading your explanation.

I fixed the slow and choppy playback when I opened up the Render Que Window and docked it beneath my timeline and kept it open. Then, when I RAM previewed, the audio played back just fine.

[VoodooBownz]

THANK YOU Seems to finally be working again!

[dcmoreni]

It works for me too!

I even try mofxtv´s solution with a two monitors workspace and preview works at real time!

Thanks mate!

OS X 10.11.3

MacPro Early 2008 (3.1), SSD (system drive), SSD (projects drive)

Nvidia Quadro 4800 fx (graphic card and CUDA drivers updated with the last versions)

26Gb RAM