Does After Effects run faster with .ai or .psd or rasterized files?

[warpigs666]

Any thoughts? All of the other things disregarded, are one of these file types better to get after effects to run faster and smoother?

[Dave_LaRonde]

I hate to say this, but it all depends on what you're trying to do... and we don't know what you're trying to do.  Thus, no straight answer.

The fastest choice isn't always the best choice.  Sorry.

[warpigs666]

Thanks, but I guess I don’t understand what you’re saying. Let‘s say all things being equal, as in I’m just trying to change the position, scale, rotation, etc. of a layer… What type of layer is going to move faster and smoother, and allow me to preview at full resolution the fastest?

[warpigs666]

Just to reiterate, I know when and why to use each file type, I've been doing design for a long time, but if I can use either I'm wondering which would be better in general terms. For some reason I always though AE processes AI files easier but the more intensive work I do in AE it seems like it prefers .psd files maybe.

[Rick Gerard]

Dave is right. Complex vector images can take a long time to decode, longer than the same frame size in a raster image like a Photoshop file. On the other hand, a simple solid color as a Photoshop file will take less time to decode than an image with a lot of colors and detail. The fastest rendering image file depends entirely on the image and what is going on. All things being equal a vector file that is as complex as a photograph, something like this:

From Adobe Stock would probably take longer to render than a similar properly sized photograph.

The more important question is what do I want to do with the image. If you plan on doing big moves, then vector files are almost always preferable.