After Effects Mac Issues

[NordicFilmworks]

Hello everyone,

I have been asked to create a well documented thread regarding several issues that "I feel" seem to be related in regards to After Effects and memory.  It seems a large amount of Mac users have posted that they have been experiencing troubles with rendering, whether this is a RAM preview or a full render from the render queue. I am not alone in my complaint nor in my request for a full fix; there are many related posts.

I have two identical mac pros to test/render with; one system is on Mavericks and one system is on Yosemite.  This is to prove without a doubt that is has NOTHING to do with the OS.

Mac Pro (Late 2013)
OSX Yosemite 10.10.1 OR Mavericks 10.9.5

3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5

16 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC

Macintosh HD

AMD FirePro D500 3072 MB

The After Effects version is the latest (today I updated): 13.2.0.49

When I attempt to render out a sequence that is short with little effects, it will render out.  Anything that is a bit more complicated, I am getting some serious memory crashes.  It is as if the RAM is not clearing old RAM in the cache.

Step 1

I am rendering out a CG scene for an upcoming short film.  It is taking 4 hours to render out 20 seconds (which again may be related to Adobe not playing nice with RAM and OS X).  About 1.5 hours in it was using 32% of the available system ram.  At 2.5 hours in (as seen below in the screenshot) it is now using 75% of 16 GB.

Step 2

As I am writing this I am simply waiting until the application will eventually crash and it will give me the famous:

"Unable to allocate 0.000 MB of memory, Either decrease the memory requirements for rendering of this frame, or install more RAM...."

Points of Note

• This RAM error will occur on several difference sequences of the project above; it also occurs on a separate unrelated project that I am trying to render that I created 2 years ago.  This proves that it is not related to a specific project, sequence, or individual effect settings.
• I have attempted rendering these sequences on both the Mac Pro with Yosemite and the Mac Pro with Mavericks.  The same thing occurs.
• I have also tried rendering out these sequences with multi frame processing ON and OFF and using research from other posts to try and tweak the RAM per CPU to allow the project to render

Solution

I have been unable at this point to find a satisfactory solution.

Related Posts

One Adobe forum employee, who will remain nameless, has criticzed me for saying that the RAM issues that have gone unresolved for more than a period of one year are related.  Sorry, the issues are RELATED.  These issues seem to be related only to MAC users regardless of their hardware.

Post #1: "Unable to allocate 0.000 MB of memory, Either decrease the memory requirements for rendering of thi

- In this post a user from over a year ago posts initial reports regarding AE CC crashing due to memory requirements while rendering.  This post is related.

- The "correct answer" is not correct as users have stated that the update suggested did not fix the problem

- The problem in this post is 100% mac users reporting

Post #2: "Unable to allocate memory" popup on Quit

- In this post the user reports that he is also having the "unable to allocated" ram message, but when he quits

- This post is over 1 year old

- a MAC user

- Several other posters recently have reported that they are getting a similar memory error

- This post is related because although he is getting a memory error when quitting and NOT when rendering, it is a similar error message on a MAC system and may help Adobe to find the solution

Post #3: unable to allocate enough memory to render current frameunable to allocate enough memory to render current frame

- This post is over 6 months old and also unresolved by Team Adobe

- The user also tried many of the tricks I did to try and render

- This post is intimately related, although he is getting the memory error during ram preview and not when doing a final render the RAM usage by After Effects would likely be very similar; if an Adobe engineer tells me they are not, I will then mark this post as un-related

- the SUGGESTED ANSWER of audio scrubbing UPDATE has NOTHING to do with the original poster's statement; just wanted to point that out

I've seen probably 2-3 dozen related posts regarding RAM issues like mine at the posts above. Most of the "suggested answers" in these posts suggest the original poster to update their After Effects to a latest version.  In the majority of these cases the original poster replies that the update did not solve their issue.

Sincerely,

Matthew

[Kevin-Monahan]

Seriously Adobe, you should be ashamed of yourselves for this debacle.

Sorry for your Mac issues, Jackthegiantslayer. Please give us a detailed list of your grievances here. That is where the developers of After Effects can read your comments. We're in support. We can only address and triage existing issues. If you have any specific issues you'd like us to help you troubleshoot, please create a separate thread with details of your issue.

Thanks,
Kevin

[jackthegiantslayer]

Kevin, I am heartened to receive a response from Adobe nearly a year after posting about an issue that took your team more than two years to resolve. It speaks volumes, believe me. Oh, and yes, I did fill out your bug request forms, and again, am thankful those forms motivated your team to quickly resolve the issue so many people were having. Let me be frank here, Kevin. I have been using After Effects since toying around with version 1.0 way back in the day, as well as Photoshop 1.0, etc. I make my living using your software and I am genuinely grateful for the tools Adobe provides. What I am not grateful for is paying continuously for something that is broken, particularly since the whole spin Adobe gave towards the Creative Cloud model was that your development teams would have the resources in place to quickly fix bugs and we wouldn't have to wait for the usual upgrade cycles to see them corrected. So please spare me your sudden concern, it's patronizing at best and disenginuous at worst. We all went through the right channels to correct this issue and were told repeatedly that all we could do was use the old version while you guys continued to profit from charging for a new version that was unusable. Perhaps a public apology from Adobe is in order, not a scolding for venting in the one place we feel listened to...by our colleagues going through the same mess. You seriously have some gall.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello JackTheGiantSlayer,

• What I am not grateful for is paying continuously for something that is broken, particularly since the whole spin Adobe gave towards the Creative Cloud model was that your development teams would have the resources in place to quickly fix bugs and we wouldn't have to wait for the usual upgrade cycles to see them corrected.
• So please spare me your sudden concern, it's patronizing at best and disenginuous at worst.
• We all went through the right channels to correct this issue and were told repeatedly that all we could do was use the old version while you guys continued to profit from charging for a new version that was unusable.
• Perhaps a public apology from Adobe is in order, not a scolding for venting in the one place we feel listened to...by our colleagues going through the same mess.
• You seriously have some gall.

I am not on the development team for After Effects, I am in support. Though I would like to, in my position I cannot adequately address any your concerns here. Your only recourse is the bug report form. I will pass along your concerns and see if I can get a personal response for you if I can. My apologies for your frustration.

Thanks,
Kevin

[jackthegiantslayer]

Certainly pass my comments on down to the team, the best response you could give me at this point is that you told them what I said, that they responded with deep remorse regarding their repeated failure and that they would like to apologize to every person attempting to use their software on an iMac Retina. Reparations would be nice too. Thanks.

[NordicFilmworks]

I have been one of the most "vocal" on the MAC failures / issues on the forum.  From 2014 to 2016, things were in a "black box" of functionality.

I will say with the 2017 versions, there were significant improvements on our Macs when using Adobe products (especially with After Effects).  Nothing major to report, although we have done less compositing this year.

I will also say that Kevin has a tough job "toeing the company line."  It can't be easy making excuses for the development team as things have been problematic for years.  That being said, Adobe HQ starved them of resources during a time of serious growth to the A/V industries and just this year are they getting things on track.

I'm hopeful things will continue to improve.

[jackthegiantslayer]

I am hopeful as well, as I've only been able to use the latest version of AE since they finally nipped the preview disfunction a few months ago. I am serious about reparations though, I'm not spending $50 a month to be a beta tester, and I'm certainly not spending $50 a month to be dicked around by Adobe's inability to adequately empower their development teams. To even hear that Adobe starved them during those years where After Effects became utterly dysfunctional infuriates me. At the very least they owe us an apology, much less a rebate on what we were paying during those two years.

[Dave_LaRonde]

jackthegiantslayer  wrote

... I'm not spending $50 a month to be a beta tester, and I'm certainly not spending $50 a month to be dicked around by Adobe's inability to adequately empower their development teams. To even hear that Adobe starved them during those years where After Effects became utterly dysfunctional infuriates me. At the very least they owe us an apology, much less a rebate on what we were paying during those two years.

I agree with you completely.  After about 5 years of Creative Cloud, After Effects is still a train wreck.  There's no resolution in sight.  Adobe -- plus gullible users -- keep holding out that carrot on a stick.....  "It'll be LOTS better in the next version!" 

Yeah, right.  You can count on getting new features that no one asked for, long-standing features that mysteriously have ceased to work properly, and little progress on the one thing that Adobe has been unable to say for almost a decade -- "IT WORKS!"

Adobe has its user base by the short hairs, and the only thing that will make them wake up is some stiff competition.  I long for that day.

[NordicFilmworks]

Dave everyone appreciates your help / advice on these forums and way back since the creative cow days.  Especially myself, I learned a lot.

Unfortunately, when the sky was falling during the period of darkness, you kind of fan-boy'd it up and were vehemently defending the status-quo.  Many MAC users had grave concerns for years.  At least I'm glad to see at least you acknowledge the decade of darkness with ​IT WORKS.

[Dave_LaRonde]

As soon as Creative Cloud was announced, my estimation of Adobe dropped like a rock.

[Szalam]

Yeah, I don't remember Dave being that much of a fanboy about AE back then.

ME, on the other hand, could often seem that way (even though I didn't mean to), but not Dave.

[NordicFilmworks]

Well, maybe it was my interpretation then.  I'm glad we are all on the same page again:

paying customers with legitimate concerns