After effects preview on M1 pro are super slow

[Guido23426814f1i6]

Hi everyone, i just bought the new Mac M1 Pro (16 gb Ram) and I'm testing out After effects. Surprisingly it is way slower than it was on my previous mac (a 2019 MacBook Pro). I really don't know what to do.

At 1/4 preview it is as slow as ful res, and even after rendering it doesn't work.

Anyone with the same issue ?

[MarekMularczyk]

Hi,

What do you mean by AE being way slower? What are you trying to do? What is slower? Rendering (exporting) ?

[emmanuelg63247898]

I think he's been quite explicit in his ticket.
Having the same issue here, the preview is basically unusable. Even at 1/4 resolution, it comes out at MAXIMUM 2/3 frames seconds.
In my case, M1 MAX 32GB, sometimes not even 1/s.

Basically, the whole software is unusable on an otherwise very, very fast machine.

[MarekMularczyk]

Are you on the latest version of After Effects? Have you tried it on 2023?

I guess with time, Adobe will improve AE on M1, I remember when they released first versions for M1, some features were not even available...

[MattGrid]

Absolutely clueless lol. "Expert" yeah right

[positionnormal]

What do you mean by "what do you mean"? What are you trying to do when you say "what are you trying to do"?

[Rick Gerard]

I ran a lot of tests on the entry-level M1 Mac Mini before springing for a loaded M1 Macbook Pro. For almost all my work, the $600 Mac Mini was faster than any of my other machines. I'm delighted with my new laptop running AE in Rosetta. I even AE Beta (which is compatible) in Rosetta when I need to use the plugins that are not M1 compatible yet.

Please describe your workflow in detail and include details about the source footage and I'll try and reproduce your problem. I'm pleased with everything, but the time it takes for some of my favorite 3rd party effects and scripts tools to be updated. 

One more thing. Almost all of my films are in 4K, and I rarely deliver a project at a higher frame rate than 29.97 fps because I want my projects to look more like movies than video games. About 90% of my work consists of visual effects and compositing. Most of my comps are under 7 seconds because I don't edit movies in AE, and almost all my motion graphics are created using Essential Graphics and exported as a MOGRAPH for use in Premiere Pro.

[OussK]

Maybe you use some third party plugin that cause this issue, so you should give us more information about your project and if this issue happen with one project or all your projects

[davidb46026235]

I am having exactly the same issue.  Brand new M1 Pro Max macbook pro with 64GB RAM.  Came with Monterey preinstalled so cannot be downgraded to Big Sur.  Latest version of after effects installed (22.2.1).  No third party plugins installed.  Description of issue:  In a project (8 bpc) with only one piece of footage (29.97, 1920x1080, H.264) if I create a comp that contains only that piece of footage with no effects and press the spacebar, preview operates at 3 to 4 fps until all frames in the work area are cached, and only then can play back at real time.  If I open the same project on a 2017 macbook pro running mojave and after effects 21, the comp immediately previews at real time, even if no frames have previously been cached.  If I open the same project and comp in the latest After Effects (22.2.1) on a 2020 intel iMac 27" running Big Sur, the comp also previews in real time even if no frames are cached.  But on the M1 Max macbook pro under Monterey and Rosetta, the comp cannot preview in real time without first caching all frames.  I installed the Beta version of After Effects, and it is able to preview this same comp in real time if I run in Apple Silicon mode, but if I run the Beta in Rosetta, I get the same result as the release version of after effects: 3 to 4 fps previews until all frames are cached.  I cannot run in apple silicon mode because I do need to install some third party plugins that are not supported on apple silicon yet (e.g., Red Giant Trapcode), but in order to verify that the slow previews are not caused by any third party plugins or software, I fully erased the mac, reinstalled the OS (Monterey 12.3), installed only Creative Cloud and After Effects with no other plugins or software installed, and I see the same poor performance under Rosetta.  I have seen a number of other users report the same issue when I search online across various adobe forums, while yet other users report excellent performance under rosetta.  Perhaps computers that shipped with Big Sur and were later upgraded to Monterey work fine while computers that shipped with Monterey do not.  Or perhaps some hardware batches are not compatible with After Effects under Rosetta while others are.  In any case, you are not alone, and many users are reporting that After Effects is unusably slow on the latest M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max computers.  Adobe has not yet acknowledged this issue or offered any fix for bad performance under rosetta.

[ruslan24597127861s]

Hello! I hope you are doing well and that you succesfully solved you problem. I am wondering: is this problem have been solved and how much rosetta 2 works slower than native m1?

[jay_rush]

I have the same issue running AE (Build 53) on Mac OS Monterey 12.4 on Mac M1 max (32GB), the preview is useless unless you restart the application and load everything again, which is unaceptable. I turned off cache preview and it's better.

[renatad37953278]

The same issue! Super slow renders on macbook pro with M1, 16 GB, updated to Monterey 12.6., adobe running under Rosetta 2. I really dont know what to do. The preview of sound is terrible. 

Is there any advice about it? Maybe reinstal the macOS and use other third party instead of Rosetta 2? 

[Studio Mantis]

Hi, i was able to fix uninstalling completely the adobe suite, and installing again. I think this could be an error when we updated from the Intel Version to Apple Silicon. Maybe some wrong file took a place... i dont know haha.

But after the clean reinstall, everything is working flawlessly. I recomend a clean install of your macOS system, because this is always a good thing to do. 🙂

I hope this helps.

[defaultxbgtb3hlhqt9]

At first it worked great but now it's a mess. A simple animation of an opacity and a small scale to an illustrator and gives problems. Uninstalled and reinstalled and still the same.

After Affects it is not optimized properly for M1

[Roman23905925dklb]

How did you solve it? 

[davidb46026235]

for me this turned out to be caused by a bug in color space handling under rosetta, which the After Effects team is now aware of, and is working on a fix.  More info here:  https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/after-effects-beta-now-on-apple-silico...

[Marcus22999429pz7g]

I have th same problem. After Effects Version 22.6.0 (August 2022) and OSX Monterrey and I can't even preview 2 frames. AE is using 170% CPU according to acitivit controll center! This is an absolute mess. Adobe PLEASE have a look into this. I can't work.

[Marcus22999429pz7g]

Found a solution, I de-selected these two settings, I hope it can help other people: 

[Rick Gerard]

Try setting your Ram allocation for other apps to 4 or 8. The pipeline works better if the pipe is a whole number multiple of 4.

[Marcus22999429pz7g]

This is some kind of bad code and synergy between the app and M1 chip / ram / OS. I have updated After Effects to the latest version and once again it can not even open a project before the memory runs out. This is a mess and it's on adobe to solve it. We pay thousands of dollars for these softwares and if we update it should include fixed. 

[AnnaMaeR]

I'm having the same issue, I bought my M1 Macbook Pro, 16GB RAM last year, December. Early this year, AE renders fast (10-15 sec rendering), I was surprised it has the same speed as my iMac and then midyear, it suddenly became super slow. A 10-15 sec video takes 5-10min to finish rendering, I even close all apps running in the background but it still annoyingly slow. What can we do about this?

[cocoua]

Hi, same problem here, AE was so so under Rosetta, the Apple Silicon version was great at the first releases, now is unusable.

I tried deleting cahce and anything I could think, but the latest version is just unusable.

REnders are super fast, but the perfomance with th program is very poor, slow previews, black composition panel...

[Felestus]

Hey bud, 

 I had the same issue but something wired kina fixed it. This is version 23.0
I changed the playback res from Quarter to Half just to see what happens. Then it worked much better. Very counter intuitive. But it just worked for me. 

[MarekMularczyk]

Are yo uusing the latest version?

Have you tried installing the previous version to see if you're getting the same problem?

I'm assuming it may be the After Effects for M1 being slow, still quite a new release.