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miker31661459
miker31661459
Participating Frequently
November 9, 2023
Question

Apple M2 Max 96GB - After Effects using up HUGE amounts of RAM for the simplest tasks.

  • November 9, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 11792 views

I am operating off a Macbook Pro M2 Max 96GB, 2TB that is ridiculously slow in After Effects. The RAM will be totally maxed out after a few minutes when performing even the simplest of tasks with just a few layers. This has been an incredibly frustrating thing to deal with and I am in need of some real answers from Adobe. I make a living from these programs and there should be no reason that with this powerful of a machine AE cant handle simple functions. I am primarily a 2D and do not use any arrays of plugins, or 3D features. 

 

I have been working in After Effects for nearly 10 years now on machines that were well under these current specs and I have never once had trouble like this. This is a real issue and it seems that I'm not the only one either. Attached are screenshots showing the AE RAM usage. 

 

Any support will be very much appreciated.

 

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    M
    MartinMulcahy
    Participating Frequently
    October 2, 2024

    Came here looking for answers to this same problem I just encountered this week, but sounds like it has been going on for atleast a year. A few months ago I bought a new iMac with 16GB unified memory RAM. I have been working in After Effects for 10 years and have never had this issue on the old Intel based machines. I cannot perform the simplest task in After Effects without the yellow warning screen popping up. I have allotted 13GB to AE, the maximum allowed, and select a disk cache folder on an external drive with 900GB free memory. I brought my mac to Genius Bar today to see if I should have bought a 24GB RAM (the highest you can get on an iMac). They said 16GB should be more than enough for simple AE projects.

     

    I have a few questions

    Has After Effects been fixed yet? I am using version 24.6.2 

     

    Why are the new M3 MacBooks able to have 128GB but an iMac only has 24GB max. 

     

    The Genius Bar guy showed me the Activity Monitor running a hundred things in the background, but all I have open is After Effects, which takes a whopping 95GB!!! What is the maximum memory the new iMac can run, and which things can i delete from the background (example Creative Cloud Library, core service, etc) 

     

    Thanks for any help

    J
    Community Manager
    jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
    Community Manager
    October 2, 2024

    AE currently can and will use all the memory you allot to it. That way it can keep rendered frames in memory for faster playback. We are looking at ways to minimize the RAM usage but that's not ready yet. 

     

    As to your issue, I would suggest trying the 25.1 Beta release and see if that resolves your memory issues. There is a particular fix in 25.1 (that will also go out with 25.0 non-Beta when that releases in the future) that addresses a memory tracking related bug. We've heard from users who have tried out the beta that it has resolved their memory issues in most cases. 

    M
    MartinMulcahy
    Participating Frequently
    October 2, 2024

    Thank you, that seems to be working! Its weird because AE v24 uses a whopping 95GB when opened. but the Beta AE v25 only uses 15GB, so I am able to work without crashing. THANK YOU!

    J
    Community Manager
    jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
    Community Manager
    January 20, 2024

    We have done some work for better memory usage in the most recent AE Beta builds. If you're able to install a beta build from Creative Cloud Desktop, we are hoping we've taken care of the memory issues that have been reported in this thread.

    miker31661459
    miker31661459Author
    Participating Frequently
    February 14, 2024

    @jenkmeister17177426 

     

    Hi there, wondering how I go about installing a beta? Is it just like installing a regular update. I would like to see if the beta helps this issue. 

      J
      Community Manager
      jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
      Community Manager
      February 14, 2024

      Open the Creative Cloud Desktop application, select Apps from the sidebar, Choose Beta Apps from the Apps types and then find After Effects and click Install. It'll install side-by-side with any existing non-beta versions of AE.

       

       

        nishu_kush
        Community Manager
        nishu_kushCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        November 9, 2023

        Hi miker31661459,

         

        Sorry to hear about the issue. I understand the frustration.

        Please share the following details so that we can diagnose the issue properly.

        Looking forward to your response.

        Note: Moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for troubleshooting.

         

        Thanks,

        Nishu

          J
          Community Manager
          jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
          Community Manager
          November 9, 2023

          We've been in touch directly with @miker31661459 and assessed the issue is related to one of the remaining purge memory issues that is currently being fixed. A fix should be out to Beta in the coming weeks and we'll follow up with the user once that's in place for confirmation of the fix.

            miker31661459
            miker31661459Author
            Participating Frequently
            November 15, 2023

            @jenkmeister17177426 

             

            The issue started to happen again. Any idea when this new fix will be coming out? It seems crazy that on such a powerful machine I have to worry about getting through simple AE tasks. 

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