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After Effects slow on M2 Ultra Mac

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 19, 2023
6 replies
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Last week I replaced my 2017 iMac with an M2 Ultra Mac Studio with 128 GB RAM. It struggles to even play a 4K .mp4 clip in real time. In my comparison tests, it was rendering comps in approximately the same amount of time as my old iMac (2017, 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, with 64 GB RAM). I currently have 16 GB RAM reserved for other applications (112 GB for AE). I have tried with and without Multi-frame Rendering turned on. I have not migrated my files from my old computer, so these are the results right out of the box. I'm using the latest version of AE (23.5.0).

I was expecting previews to be about 5 times faster, but hoping for more. At first I was just terribly disappointed, and thought I made a huge mistake investing 8K in new computer equipment, since After Effects is my livelihood. But now I'm assuming that AE is just not operating right. I have read mixed comments about whether AE is optimized for the M2. Does anyone have any up-to-date information on that? Or maybe know of some trick? Something I'm missing? Thanks in advance.

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Correct answer jenkmeister17177426

The Adobe teams are in discussion with Apple about this. Apple have identified it as an issue in macOS. At this time the only workaround we have from them is to Disable "Displays have separate Spaces" in macOS System Settings > Desktop & Dock. While not ideal, this should improve playback performance.

S

Stidhum_m4 Mac

Participant

Same here. Spent the last 12 days with Adobe and Apple blaming each other for the issue. So I bought Davinci Studio, same issue, they blamed Apple.

im convinced its a 4k monitor issue. Im using 2 LG 4k ultra fine 32" ERGO monitors. No change when I unplug one.

JHillPhD

Known Participant

It's definitely an Apple issue because of their integrated M-chips and memory taking the fact there's no actual GPU strong enough to handle multiple monitors regardless of their size. On my 2017 MBP I don't have any issues only with my mac mini m2 pro. This might be the last time I use mac to render anything with video, motion graphics, or 3D.

C

Christian Z

Inspiring

I have set my 4k Monitors to 2560x1440 (low resolution), initially I had these set to the above field 2560 x 1440, this has completely addressed the rendering issues on my M2 Ultra 2023 M2 Mac.. I've lost a little clarity on the screen, but my workflow is more desirable,

J

jenkmeister17177426

Correct answer

Jenkmeister

The Adobe teams are in discussion with Apple about this. Apple have identified it as an issue in macOS. At this time the only workaround we have from them is to Disable "Displays have separate Spaces" in macOS System Settings > Desktop & Dock. While not ideal, this should improve playback performance.

B

Branded Productions

Participating Frequently

Any word on if this issue has been adressed in either Ventura 13.6, or in Sonoma 14.0? I'm about a month into this new system and, I'm nervous to upgrade to either one without knowing if I'll be trading one bug for another. Currently running triple monitors and with spaces separate on all displays, my workflow is a mess. I'm in the middle of a 4 month compositing contract and this computer "upgrade" has been.. shall we say, less than optimal.

J

jenkmeister17177426

Jenkmeister

Latest update I have:

MacOS 14 has a partial fix and should be released soon. It's a slight improvement but not a full fix.
Apply are currently planning to have the full fix in MacOS 14.1.

B

Branded Productions

Participating Frequently

Has there been any resolution to this? I am about to pull the trigger on purchasing a new M2 Ultra system for AE and PR work.. this post has me hesitating. My current setup is using 3 monitors, and there's no way I could go back to just 1 monitor for my workflow.

nopowAuthor

Participating Frequently

I can't speak to dcmoreni's problem, since I only have one monitor. But as for me, I'm embarrassed (but happy) to report that my more recent projects have been running quite fast. The comps I initially used for my tests were all from the same project, and were equally slow on both the new mac and the old mac. And strangely, a single 4K clip caches at a similar speed on both computers. But I did just run a bunch of comparison tests with some other projects with effects-heavy comps and many layers, and the previews were 3 to 5 times faster on the Mac Studio than the iMac. It's not the speed I dreamed about, but certainly a big improvement.

So I don't know, maybe it was the camera projection mapping in those initial comps that were slowing it down, but I'm not depressed anymore. I would just say don't get carried away with your expectations, like perhaps I did. Thanks to everyone else for responding to my post.

nopowAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the reply, James. Those are all good tips, and I did all of them before I ever posted here. I just bought this Mac Studio, and all my tests were done right out of the box... up-to-date OS, freshly installed AE, no plugins or scripts, 90% RAM allocation, multiprocessing on (I tried off as well), no other apps running, and no files migrated from another computer. And yet, preview times are comparable to the old Intel iMac. The only thing that is not as you described are my projects. All of my projects are large compositions, multiple effects, many layers. That's the whole reason I purchased the new M2 Ultra with twice the Ram and 24 cores. To be clear, AE hasn't been so slow that it's unusable (like dcmoreni's experience posted earlier). It's just only slightly faster than the old iMac, which is not at all what I expected. As mentioned, the computer is fast in the benchmark app I ran, so I'm convinced that this is an issue of After Effects not yet fully optimized for the M2.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Have you tried opening the same project on both the 2017 iMac and the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and then use the Composition Profiler to compare, Layer by Layer, what is or is not faster and by how much or how little?

View detailed performance information with Composition Profiler

Every once and awhile I'll open up the same project on my 2017 iMac Pro and 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max just to compare things. The 2017 iMac Pro sees a very nice performance boost from Multi-frame Render, but the 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max is always faster.

J

John V Knowles

Community Expert

What drive is the video clip on -- is it the internal drive or an external that's plugged in?

Do you have other media you can try -- preferably something that's not heavily compressed?

When you say it's struggling to "even play a 4K .mp4 in real time" as if that's a simple video format, be aware that it's actually not simple nor is it a good video format to edit with. MP4s are typically wrappers for the H.264 codec which is highly compressed and can be very CPU-intensive to decode for playback. Even high-end PCs struggle with H.264 clips from drones or cameras like the Sony A7s. A better format for editing is a mezzanine codec like a flavor of ProRes, MXF, Cineform or Avid's DNx media.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------JVK | Editor/Designer/Software Instructor. Pr, Ae, Ch, Ps, Ai, Id

nopowAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the response, John. I should have mentioned... my project file and video files are stored locally, on the Mac Studio's SSD. I should also mention that it's a 24-core CPU, and multi-frame rendering is on. Other compressed formats have similar playback speed (with moderate stuttering), although I did (barely) get real-time playback of a .MOV using the ProRes 444 codec. But the main point I was trying to make is that I have a much faster system, with no noticeable difference in AE's performance. In the benchmark I ran this morning, the Mac Studio scored 4 times better performance than my iMac. And yet AE is previewing roughly 25% faster, and with some comps, even slower than the iMac. I look forward to hearing your thoughts...

C

Christian Z

Inspiring

Some fresh news after having to deal with the same issues this morning...

To not make this too long, I will share the last, and I think most relevant results.

I am using my M2 Ultra with 2 displays (LG 27UK650).

I realise that the problem comes when I work with both displays.

If I unplug my second monitor, everything runs smoothly.

Using both monitors, causes After effects to reproduce preview not real time (very choppy), same with Davinci Resolve reproducing a single 4K ProRes422 clip (with no effects at all), and with Premiere.
One thing that makes some difference is if I turn on the computer with only 1 monitor, and once Ventura is running I plug in the second monitor, then things seams to work fine (at least during the 5 min tests).
But if I turn on the computer with both monitors plugged in, I have graphic performance issues since the beggining.

The weird thing is that I've been working with my M1 Ultra (Monterey) for the last year, using the same LG monitors, and I did not have a single issue in terms of graphic performance using my every day softwares.

This afternoon I have an appointment in Apple Store to perform the same tests but plugging the MacStudio M2 Ultra to 2 Apple Displays and see if the issues still remain or not.

I will post the results tonight.
Cheers!

Hi, just started experiencing this issue, running 2x 4k monitors M2 Max 16" Macbook pro.. Just wondering if there's a work-around or update..

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