Freezes for 5-10 mins upon opening small file, opens and then freezes again. (fast computer)

[Timo5CEC]

Hey guys, I'm coming here hoping someone can give me a solution to this problem as myself and our company's Support Team can't figure it out.

Problem:

I'm working with the same files as my colleagues who can all easily open, edit and export them.Now I haven't worked with AE yet on this computer as I'm using Photoshop most of the time but I'm supposed to work with AE for some projects now. My computer has enough memory and is top notch if you ask me (screenshots added). 

When opening files, it sort of freezes for a while on the opening screen with a white rectangle, even when opening a small file (23mb). If I use my computer inbetween it just freezes and I have to force quit AE, when I don't use my computer during that time it opens after a while. Then it takes a lot of time to see the project files and when I try to edit something it freezes again. 

As I said, I tried a few things together with our Support Team like clearing the cache, upping the 'Maximum Disk Cache Size' to 100gb. Changing cache folders, updating AE, installing earlier versions, reset preferences. Nothing worked.

Below are a few screenshots of my computer and AE. Does anyone know how this is possible or how I can fix this problem? Many thanks in advance! 🙂

[angie_taylor]

Have you tried resetting the preferences? Always the first thing to do. I'm surpised support didn't do this though?

Make sure the files you are accessing from the project (media files) are not on a shared drive, or a syncing drive like Dropbox?

Check that the Graphics card on the computer you're using is supported by After Effects? If it is, make sure the system is allowing AE to use it (sometimes when you switch to using a battery on a laptop for example, it will revert to the "lesser GFX card"

If all of these are checked out and you still have issues it sounds like a corupt font or corupt file somewhere?

[Timo5CEC]

Thank you for your quick response. I did the reset but no luck, the files are locally on my iMac so they're not coming from a drive so that could also not be the problem.

I think the Graphics card is supported by After Effects as a colleague of mine has the exact same iMac and has no problems with AE. How can I see if the system is allowing AE to use the graphic card?

The files are not corrupt, I'm checking with that colleague of mine and she can open this easily, and we've also tried with different projects.

[Timo5CEC]

Hey Angie, any chance you know how I can see if the system is allowing AE to use the graphic card? Or if you know anything else I can try to get AE to work properly on this machine?

Any help would be much appreciated! I'm lost haha

[angie_taylor]

if you go into the Performance/ Fast Previews preferences it will tell you there whether your graphics card is being used.