After Effects Performance Issue

[mgr0704]

I recently upgraded my computer to an AMD Ryzen 9 5950 16-Core Processor 3.40 GHz 64 GB RAM

While on the Maya software side my render times have been radically reduced, on the After Effects software side I see no difference in performance, both interactively and rendering. I have set the preferences to utilize as much CPU and RAM it needs. Any ideas? Something I am missing?

[nubnubbud]

depends on what you came from. 
basically, most of AE is a single core program that uses 8 bit effects, no GPU, and just multiplies the process to multiple cores, not proper multithreading. basically, it doesn't benefit from more cores, just faster, fewer, bigger cores. Good luck finding that in modern times, the program's from 30 years ago.
I wish you luck in your continued complaining on these forums, and if you happen to have a new GPU and have 4k UHD footage or lower, Resolve can do it for free, though the effects are a bit less impressive and granular.
the difference is that other programs use your hardware. this one only goes faster on older apple system, and faster, but buggier, on newer ones. I highly suggest CS6 if you can manage it. that was the best.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/after-effects-performance/td-p/9692952
is the best you'll get from the more veteran commenters.

[Mylenium]

That's just AE being AE. There's nothing wrong. The program just barely uses any GPU functions, at least not sensibly, and many functions are barely multithreaded or parallelized.

Mylenium

[mgr0704]

Hi Mylenium,

Thanks for replying.

I upgraded mainly for Maya performance and going from 6 Core to 16 Core and 16 GB RAM to 64 has cut my render time to a third, but AE is the only software I can afford on the other end, so dissappointed there, Especially with more and more clients shooting 4K. Thanks again.

Best,

Mike

[Warren Heaton]

The speed of the processors is the main thing that affects render time in After Effects.

As long as all of your effects are updated for Multi-frame Rendering, a 6-core to 16-core change should see some improvement: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/multi-frame-rendering.html

[mgr0704]

Hi Warren,

Yes, I had found those settings and set them properly. Thanks.

[Warren Heaton]

Do you have a sample project that you can share?

Or, since most of us cannot make our source footage available to others, have you rendered the After Effects Multi-Frame Rendering Benchmark Project?  This can be compared to render times on other systems to see if there's something about the configuration that might be tweaked or if the render time is in keeping with what's to be expected.

[mgr0704]

I will download and run that later today. Thanks.

[mgr0704]

Hi Warren,

the AE Benchmark rendered as Quicktime Apple ProRes in the Render Que took 2:29 (Min)

the AE Benchmark rendered as Quicktime Apple ProRes in Media Encoder Que took 3:31 (Min)

Not sure if rendering out the 4K footage is a separate test, but the results are:

the AE Benchmark rendered as Quicktime Apple ProRes in the Render Que took :28 (Min)

the AE Benchmark rendered as Quicktime Apple ProRes in Media Encoder Que took :12 (Min)

Is there some chart that shows those same performance numbers on different computers?

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

@mgr0704 

For the AEPulseBenchmark, we'd render at Best Settings/High Quality (Apple ProRes 422) or Best Settings/Lossless.  

Let's see... I just ran the AEPulseBenchmark on a few machines using After Effects 2023 with the High Quality Output Module:

• 16 minutes, 52 seconds on an i7 2019HP Omen 15-inch 16GB/2TB/RTX 2080
• 9 minutes, 10 seconds on an M1 Max 202116-inch MacBook Pro 32GB/1TB
• 5 minutes, 35 seconds on a 16-core Intel Xeon W 2019 Mac Pro 192GB/4TB/AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32Gb

Two and a half minutes to three and a half minutes sounds pretty good.

Do you have your older 6-core machine to run this benchmark with?

For a benchmark that has lots of users posting their workstation settings, try Equiload's After Effects Performace Test File.  It has 313 comments.  I'd guess your workstation would complete that in about 1 minute and 45 seconds or so.

[mgr0704]

The 6 core was updated to 16 core, so no. With Maya renders, I have the time-stamped frames rendered on the 6 core, so I can just run those scene files again and compare.

Well, I will take your word for it that my new machine renders AE scripts faster than the old. Just seems about the same to me. God help us when clients move to 8K resolution. Thanks for you help on this.

Best,

Mike