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JerDaps
Participant
April 24, 2023
Question

EXRs, what a pain...

  • April 24, 2023
  • 19 replies
  • 1568 views

For years the community has been asking for the EXR workflow to speed up and for years this community is still frustrated in Adobe's response to this. Yes, there have been some nice tweaks to how AE interperates the files, helping us shuffle the multichannels a little easier. But the speed in which files are played on the timeline is just rediculously slow, even when working with HD frames.

With more and more users leaning into 3D in their daily work, and wanting to have as much conrol over the final output of their imagery, the After Effects team needs to put a higher priority on this request. You would think that compositing exrs would move up on the list of requests since there has been such a big shift to integrate 3D into the Adobe ecosystem. If this needs to be formally asked for again, then I am asking that this push to the top of requests.

Also, we all know that there are other compositors out there like DaVinci Resolve 18( which you can get for FREE) that handle exrs much faster than AE, but its nice to keep things in one eco sysetem if possible. Please Adobe. Lets put a little more effort into areas that so many professionals lean on in their day to day work.

 

Thanks.

19 replies

Carder123
Participating Frequently
May 28, 2025

I've just started using Unreal Engine 5.4 and I've been rendering out EXRs.

 

I was totally shocked when I imported them into After Effects. I'm using an M1 Ultra 20-core Mac Studio, and After Effects ground to a halt.  I tried rendering out proxies of the RGBA, AO and depth passes....then gave up. That defeats the object of using EXR files.  Until Adobe sort out this, I'll have to go back to old-skool PNG sequences of each pass.  Sort it out Adobe - looks like people on here have been asking you for years. Keep up!

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 28, 2025

@Carder123 


Yeah, EXRs are a little on the heavy side, even with wicked fast Flash storage.

 

If import/export speed is important, use TIF instead of PNG.

 

 

 

Participant
January 31, 2025

Totally agree. I work in huge canvas, with a renderfarm, and started to implement ACES workflow. Wanted to use EXR DWAB, but it's so painful to work with... even with only one pass! Reading and extract passes need to be optimized.
The only good aspect is for rendering/writing, it's almost 2x faster than PNG.

nishu_kush
Community Manager
Community Manager
April 19, 2024

Hi all,

 

Can you install the latest version of After Effects and see if the issue persists?

Let us know. I am moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for now.

 

Thanks,

Nishu

Known Participant
May 17, 2024

Nothing has improverd in latest version.

Inspiring
December 23, 2023

Warren, what's your favorite part about working with full 4K EXR plates in AE?

mrBeep
Known Participant
June 16, 2023

It is playable after caching.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 14, 2023

@Shebbe 

 

Maybe.  Performance enhancements are always welcome, but I am good with a motion graphics/effects based app playing souce footage from RAM as if it's uncompressed at the Comp settings and bit depth of the project.  In an NLE, I would expect different.

 

 

Shebbe
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 14, 2023

"Should be playable after being cached"

This is exactly the issue AE has. A lot of formats play back redicolously slow. Even the mercury playback engine in Premiere is faster. But in complete contrast to this, I can play 4/5K RED RAW or ARRI RAW or ProRes in realtime even with basic grading and still scrub really fast back and forth like it's proxies when I'm in Resolve. There is little excuse in todays standards to have such poor decoding and playback performance. And it's not limited to EXRs.

Adobe still has miles to improve on that front. I would assume that can only be fixed by writing a new engine that can actually take true advantage of modern hardware/software. The ratio GPU/CPU usage in AE is still laughable while Resolve can fully utilize the GPU.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 14, 2023

@PanBeep 

Do you have a project that you can share?

 

1080 EXR Image Sequences should be playable after being cached. 

 

 

mrBeep
Known Participant
June 14, 2023

I cant see any impreovements. AE cant't play FullHD exr without caching it, same with other formats. I guess the whole software nedds to be rewritten from scratch.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 13, 2023

@PanBeep 

Are you not seeing any performance improvements since EXR was overhauled?

This article might be helpful in determining why you're having issues while others are not: Fight of the File Formats! PNGs or EXRs?