After Effects is unbelievably slow on M1 Macbook

Report · Jul 24, 2021

Hello everyone, I have been using AE for 3 years. I was using a windows PC in the beginings of my experience which had 16 GB ram and i7 intel CPU. 4 months ago I switched my system into Apple and I was expecting a relief on my workflow, but I have exteremely disappointed. AE runs slower than my 5-year-old PC. Previews are ridiculously slow, renders are boring. Last day I worked on a small 20-25 sec. footage, on which just I applied an camera blur with automation, it took about 1 hour to work and render the file.

Does anybody know when will the optimization arrives? Because I'm not getting what I pay for.

Report · Jul 24, 2021

Report · Jul 24, 2021

I'm currently running some tests on the most basic M1 Mac Mini with 8GB Ram and 256GB of storage. I have an external thunderbolt Samsung EVO 850 1 TB drive for all my application files and previews, my thunderbolt raid is where my media sits. Frankly, I'm amazed at the performance. I'm working up a full review that I will post soon. I'm running AE 2020, AE Beta in rosetta but Premiere Pro Beta is universal and running amazingly well. Working on a documentary in Premiere Pro with 4K original footage and I'm getting no dropped frames at all with color correction, automated audio ducking for the VO, and graphics.

I would use AE Beta if you have access to it. Take the default preferences, and make sure you have sufficient cache applied. I do not think it will be long before AE is fully compatible with the M1 chip.

Report · Aug 18, 2021

Im having the same problem, im running in a new 24 inch imac 16Gb Ram, but Premiere is slower than my windows laptop!! I cant believe it!

I dont know if i have some bad configuration or what... becaus this isnt normal. im going to ask in the costumer service because this is not acceptable.

Rick... can you share your configuration in Premiere Pro? Maybe it can help 😞

Report · Aug 19, 2021

Everything in After Effects and Premiere Pro has been set to normal. I am using a fast external thunderbolt SSD drive as the location for all of my Creative Cloud program installs. I did that because I only have 256MB of storage on my basic M1 Mac Mini. I also have the Library folders and many of my other program files installed on the external thunderbolt drive.

I'm currently cutting a documentary. Almost all of the source footage is from a 4K Sony video camera, some of the footage is 10bit ProRez 4K. I'm having no problems editing at all with Premiere Pro and only a Rotobrush crash in AE because of the latest IOS update to 11.15.1. I usually clone my boot drive so I can quickly revert my Macs to the previous version but I didn't do it this time and I regret it. I don't have any critical Rotobrush projects coming up so I'm not going to take the time to roll back one version of my OS.

A full review is coming. Maybe later this week.

Report · Oct 18, 2021

I tested AE and a MBP m1 16Gb Ram - and I had the same problems with performance. In my case I tried with .mxf mpeg2 op1a clips. My guess is that mpeg 2 is not acclerated by the m1 chip or there is some fine tuning needed in the software.

Sadly the native Blender 3D Software did perform worse than my ryzen 4900HS pc laptop with rtx2060. The preview was pretty slow, when turning the 3d scene. While my PC Laptop gave my butterly smooth preview.

Report · Oct 18, 2021

I just use the Beta and works fine. --

Personal info removed by Mod.

Report · Oct 19, 2021

I tried the beta for m1- not a big differenz...

Report · Oct 28, 2021

So you tried the new beta AE that runs natively on the M1 Pro? Do you have an M1 Pro or M1 Max. What exactly were you testing? Really curious how the new MBP with M1 Pro runs AE with the multithreading, and eventually without rosetta.

Report · Nov 10, 2021

I was testing the beta AE on the MacBook Pro m1 - so not the new m1 pro or max.

Report · Oct 19, 2021

What Codec is your footage?

Report · Dec 03, 2021

I do not think it will be long before AE is fully compatible with the M1 chip.

By @Rick Gerard

Said guy back in July...

Report · Oct 28, 2021

The first AE beta with native M1 support came out two days ago. Try it and see how it performs for you! And definitely give feedback on the beta forum! (Get to it with the feedback icon in the toolbar of the beta version.)

Report · Nov 10, 2021

I just got the new Macbook Pro 14 with the new M1 Pro chip.

I opened up an old AFX project that I did on my 2013 iMac and it's not even loading the previews. Keeps beachballing...

I really hope there's some updates coming to get this thing running.

Should I be changing the GPU settings or something to get to a point where I can just work?

Anyone else experiencing this?

Report · Nov 10, 2021

Im using a 2015 iMac and just got a macbook pro with the M1 Max chip. I did render tests on both machines using 4 different projects. I experienced something similar on one of those projects where it took like 10 seconds to render each frame on the MBP and my 2015 iMac rendered the same in 2 seconds. My iMac rendered the 40 second animation in 22 minnutes and I stopped the macbook pro after 30 mins and it wasnt even halfway done. On the other test renders the macbook pro was thankfully was ~20% faster. However when I used the AE Beta version that runs natively on the M1 it was blazing fast. Like twice as fast as my old iMac. So I dont think we're really going to see significant speed improvement from these new chips until AE runs on it natively. Hopefully its coming soon.

Report · Nov 23, 2021

AE beta is super fast BUT it's missing a majority of the plug-ins and basic integrated plug-ins to actually use AE in production. When can we expect a full release? Also waiting to hear from RedGiant Suite on native AE support. My 2018 MBP is about 4 times faster than my new M1 mac mini. Hoping the M1 MBP Max is somewhat better.

Report · Nov 23, 2021

As far as Red Giant stuff goes, Magic Bullet Suite and (most of) VFX Suite are ready to go. You can see the full list here: https://bit.ly/3qp7mAS If you're interested in being considered for the beta tests for M1 on other suites, you can message RedGiantNews on Insta or Twitter.

Report · Nov 30, 2021

Thanks for that list! Unfortunately it's just not there with the current missing plugin support. I'm comping with PNG sequences with only 24 layers on my new M1 MBP Max 64GB Ram 32 Core GPU and it's slower than my 2018 MBP Quad Core with 16GB Ram.

Report · Nov 10, 2021

I guess until the native version is out, it wont change. In many cases single core speed is more important, than blazing fast export. I think I stay with my ryzen rtx 3070 laptop- its still very fast in most cases- until arm AE is out- i wait.

Report · Dec 13, 2021

Hey guys,

I just received my M1 Max 32GB/1TB macbook pro and I'm not seeing ANY noticeable increase in speed or peformance in After Effects CC 2022 compared to my 2012 iMac. I can't understand how that's possible since my 2012 iMac must be a dinosaur by comparison. See my iMac specs below:

Will download the beta version of AE and test it out on my M1.

Report · Dec 13, 2021

I assume it's because we're running AE in Rosetta-mode (if you're not using the Beta version), so it has to translate apps built for Intel so they will run on Apple Silicon. AE Beta is way faster but it's mostly unuseable for me since it's missing a bunch of my regular go-to client plugins (which obviously has nothing to do with Adobe). Looking forward to an official M1 release hopefully soon and fingers crossed the plugin companies aren't far behind!

Report · Dec 15, 2021

Anyone running AE on M1 with Monterey? I cant seem to get Boris FX plugin to come up in Beta or Regular running Rosetta. Help! I need to track a property outline. Using 2022 AE.

Report · Dec 16, 2021

Hello everybody, I just downloaded the latest beta release for After Effects on my M1 max with OS Monterey. And I'm happy to report that AE beta is working much better. I'll do further testing, but so far no lags of any kind. Of course I haven't installed any plugins yet. I don't have many, just Auto Fill, Reposition Anchor Point, and Counter Preset 2. So I'm not sure yet if any of them work in Beta mode. But the latest beta release is definitely much faster and smoother.

Report · Dec 16, 2021

Hi, never posting here but logging in now to add that I'm having the same issue and it's driving me insane! I just bought a Macbook Pro, 16 inch M1 Pro and 32 GB of Ram on the very latest version of OS as well as Adobe as well as Beta Adobe apps and I switched from a 2013 Macbook Pro and for AE the preview times are the same! And rendering takes twice as long! I mostly do cartoon-y animation, sometimes animated within AE sometimes frame by frame from other sources, with some grain overlays. Also did some regular 4k camera footage for testing, all of it felt like I was in the year 2003 and it's kiiiilling meeeee! Photoshop straight up dropped UI menu parts (like importing video frames) in their newest versions and generally PS is running slow as for me as well. I pressed all the rocket and lightning buttons there are, I distributed all my powers and rams sensibly AAAAH I DEEPLY DISLIKE ADOBE! Everything has worsened since I updated from CS f*cking 6 to the creative cloud and then doubly worse to the new hardware. They just dont deserve money past the initial one time payment for CS6 back in 2011 or whenever that was. 10 years ago. Ok, thank you for your patience

Report · Jan 21, 2022

I couldn't agree more! Cost is out of control for these programs.

I recently bought the latest and greatest M1 MAX MacBook Pro and my 2020 iMac will render AE files faster and is just more efficient, than my new M1 MAX.