After Effects renders slowly while the computer is idle

[klaush55119029]

After Effects is driving me nuts!!!

First of all, I have never seen a UI that is so infuriatingly slow. Most clicks are answered seconds later. It's so bad that usability is seriously impacted.

And when I render (via Media Encoder) and one would expect that all of the available performance of the computer is used, the load on my system looks something like this:

What is holding back After Effects? I have never seen anything like this.

Any thoughts?

[Szalam]

Something is odd if the clicks are responding as you've described. Response is basically instantaneously for me with the UI. We're going to need a lot more information from you to even begin guessing at the issue.

As to AE's rendering, some stuff uses the GPU, some stuff is multithreaded on the CPU, some stuff uses only one thread on the CPU, sometimes it's waiting for hard drives to give it what it needs...it varies a lot depending on what's in your composition and what format you're rendering to.

[klaush55119029]

Thanks for taking the time!

I am rendering basic animations of shapes created in Illustrator in what basically looks like fancy presentation slides. There are some expressions in various places. Nothing that should be too tasking in my opinion.

I am rendering to mp4 with the "Match Source - high bitrate" preset using the "Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue..." command.

I know that rendering is using a complex set of different resources at different times. But what baffles me is this: When I hit the Start Queue button in Media Encoder, I can sit and watch the load on my system as depicted above. And very rarely does any of the values even go beyond 50%. The fans in my computer don't even start revving up throughout the entire time.

The only exception is the scratch disk (Disk D:) which sporadically shows very short bursts of 100% activity before going back to zero.

I am happy to supply more information. Just let me know what you need.

[Szalam]

Try rendering to something like ProRes (now availalbe on Windows!) or Cineform directly out of AE's render queue and see if it's any different. (You can then take the resulting file into AME to make the MP4.)

[Martin_Ritter]

About the rendering:

I think there is at least on post per week with the same "issue".

Yes, AE could perform much better in general, but right now, everybody have to deal with it the way it is. Actually, the render engine did improved over the last major updates.

No, AE won't use all your cores in general. This highly depends on your project down to the current frame.

Generally, core rates are preferred over core count - rather 4 cores @4.5GHz then 6 cores @3.30GHz.

To benefit from a fast system when rendering, plugins like RenderGarden, BG Renderer or RenderBoss are needed (or you write your own script - it's not that hard to get the aerender.exe to work). However, they only make sense, if you have lots of RAM, since they do launch multiply render processes where each process needs it own space in memory.

Let's focus on the slow UI -  there is not much you can do about the rendering times.

[klaush55119029]

I know that AE does not use all cores. But shouldn't it use at least one... kinda.... like... fully? Sorta...?

My machine isn't sweating even a little while AE is crawling along. I find that irritating. Seems like something is holding AE back and it's not the resources of the computer.

You say "lets focus on the slow UI". Do you have any ideas on that issue?

[Martin_Ritter]

I've seen AE using 10% of my CPU capabilities while rendering very basic stuff. Chances are high, AE is holding back itself in your case.

While I was waiting for the render to complete, I read about aerender.exe and later wrote a basic render manager in python to get a better performance. I never ask much what AE should or could, but focused on finding a solution.

Your screenshot reveals what AE is using all cores, but is not loading them up much. This is what annoys people - including myself. CPU load highly depend on the frame, effect, footage, ... If you are using the Force Motion Blur effect with 32 samples for instance, it will push the CPU to 100% at a very nice pattern. However, this does not speed up anything, since there is now even more so calculate.

I don't know in detail how AE renders images, but it needs to rasterize everything before it can be processed. When working with shape layers or vectors, than there is this additional calculation. Also, you have to imagine that one layer of an HD image with alpha channel has around 66MBit and CPU has to do manipulations on those data with only 2048 Bit level 1 cache. Since it took around 100 CPU cycles to load data from RAM into level 1 cache, you might understand that your system is waiting for data most of the time when rendering. CPU is simply not made for massive data manipulation - that's why GPUs envolved.

Adobe missed the good point to switch to full GPU support and tries to keep up now. But this process will took years, for sure.

You can launch two render processes. This will reduce render times by almost 50%. But since even one render process already uses 2/3 of your RAM, there is not much to benefit from a 2nd render process. Because once out of RAM, render time increase in large amounts, like 10 times from normal. You can validate this if you close AE, reopen it and limitedly start rendering. Keep an eye on the RAM load. If it is below 50% most of the time, you could start a second render process. As said, dealing with aerender.exe is very easy. A simple batch will do it - not comfortable, but will do it.

I only noticed a sluggish UI when a script or extension hangs, compositions are not rendered in preview, a lot of audio layers with displayed waveforms, a lot of expressions - especially when for or while loops are involved - or just a bad day for the computer.

In most cases restarting the machine, rendering everything, closing plugins, clearing cache or just working for a couple of hours solved those issues.

You can try to reset your preferences (Reset After Effects Preferences), update all drivers, reinstall AE, get rid of unused software, clear temp folder, create and try with a new OS user account or as last option, reinstall OS and everything.

For a more accurate advice, we need your computer specs and a screenshot of your AE UI and comp will be helpful. Also a screencap of the issue would help much.