Low memory warning in After Effects 23.0 (2023)

[raymondcraig]

Unfortunately 23.0 did not fix the issue for me on my M1 mac. It still only renders 2 frames at a time and gives the same error. If I revert back to version 22.4 it works perfectly but any subsequent update (including the 23.0 just released) has the playback issue.

Update: version 24.0 working much better!

I had various results with updates 23.1-23.6, most of them still occasionally having the issue saying it's out of memory or even black frames when rendering. It didn't matter if I had all plugins removed, fresh install, and no other programs running. I just updated to v24.0 and instantly started working like it used to before v23.0. RAM previews are loading right away and playing back in realtime speeds. I'll update if anything changes but so far they seem to have fixed the issues plaguing v23+ at least for me.

[Neb5FEB]

I am using 23.1 and still having this issue! I have reverted to 22.6 and after effects seems to be running ok for now. Why do adobe software updates consitently make things worse?

[tonycomley]

A quick glance at the forums shows that the issue has not been fixed. The consensus in the industry right now is to avoid all versions of AE 23 and use 22. All the major studios I'm working with insist on it.

Attempts to get it contact Adobe just result in defensive and untrue responses like: "It's fixed in the latest update" or requests to share the project followed by radio silence. I'm concerned that this will be another bug that takes years to fix. Very very tired of paying £50/month for broken software.

[SRLAWSON]

Agreed. This ridiculous issue - and Adobe treating us all like we're stupid - damn near cost me a job before Christmas. I am very careful now about work I take on that involves After Effects because I can no longer trust it. All these years it has been consistently strong, and has allowed the reasonable use of plugins, and now? Neither.

Guys. Stop stalling, please. Don't ask us for system specifics. It doesn't matter. You've got people on different machines running different projects all having the same issue, with many of those problems coming from the new generation of Silicon Macs; powerful ones, at that, including my own, a 64GB MacBook Pro that boots up and opens Photoshop faster than I can go downstairs and put the kettle on.

The fact I had to downgrade back to my 2017 iMac with its Fusion Drive and 16GB of RAM and work at that pace, says enough.

Version 23 is broken. I am also telling studios to avoid it, as well as being told by studios to avoid it. It is a total joke. I have been on this thread now for nearly 6 months. 6 months! And that you still can't accept that there is a universal problem after all we have tried - and keep trying - to tell you is insulting.

[Michal30658209d88r]

It absolutely does NOT, it makes things even worse. I'm using right 23.6 and this is the worst AE experience I've had since CS3. Its unusable, I have to restart the app every 5 minuts, and there's nothing complex going on in the composition. I see a lot of people reporting this, some of them with really high end workstation configurations. What a mess. I can't spend half of my work time reporting bugs and issues to a software developer, that is not a viable solution.

[Ulysses Oliveira]

AE out of memory bug is even worse in version 23.1. It crashes my computer whenever I try to export a comp to Media Encoder. I'm using Windows 10 and 32GB of RAM. Adobe shoud roll back to version 22 before fixing this serious bug for good.

[Warren Heaton]

@Ulysses Oliveira 

Sorry to hear you're still having an issue.

Have you tried disabling all third party plugins, addons, and extensions as a troubleshooting step?  Are you able to make a project available?

We can use Creative Cloud Desktop to install older versions and have multiple versions installed at the same time.

Creative Cloud Desktop > After Effects > More Options > Other Versions

[Ulysses Oliveira]

Thank you for your reply. The only plugin I was using was FXConsole by VideoCopilot which is a very simple one. I removed it but to no avail. My project is a very trivial video edition that could be easily done by a freeware video editing program. AE version 23.1 does have the same memory issue as version 23.0, but the issues in the newest version are much worse. To process a 92MB video, AE is using about 18GB of RAM! I use two monitor and when I export a comp to Media Encoder, my monitors flicker and one of them is turned off. Media Encoder doesn't even get the file to process. I've never seen such a weird thing!

Perhaps, the only solution by now is to uninstall AE 23 and go back to version 22.

[jenkmeister]

Did you make any progress on why this was happening? If you try to export directly inside AE's render queue, does that work? 

Monitor flickers might be more related to the GPU driver you have installed. Have you installed or updated those recently? 

[Ulysses Oliveira]

In fact, I uninstalled AE 23 and installed version 22 of both AE and Media Encoder. Surprisingly enough the problems persist. I reduced the amount of memory allocated to AE and things became a little better because when AE complains about lack of memory, I exit and start again and the problem goes way. Anyway, I've been monitoring memory usage and noticed that AE is still using so much memory for very small projects.

The only way I can (sometimes) render a video in Media Encoder is by luching it separetely from AE.

My GPU is Vga Asus Geforce Gtx 1060 6gb Dual Oc Pci Express 3.0 and I'm using the latest driver by Nvidia.

[John Philip0101]

Downgraded to 22.4, and the file works without major issues. 23.1 is still struggling with the preview. Shameful for the developers. 

[jenkmeister]

Any chance you can screen record your experience so we can see your project, the workflow, and the slowdowns? We'd love to figure out what's going on but we need help getting reproducable cases. 

[SRLAWSON]

Feels like what you guys need to do is go through the code systematically and locate what is failing. Do it side by side with v22. Various suggestions have been made here, but it seems like you are all sleeping on this problem.

It is happening regardless of plug-ins, regardless of systems and regardless of projects. It is an inherent problem in this software.

Please, for goodness sake, find it.

[jenkmeister]

For those of you still having issues, we’d love to get on a video call with you individually and take a look at your system while it’s running AE 23.3. We really do want to track down any remaining issues so we can get them fixed.

If that’s you and you’re willing to get in a call, post back and we’ll get it setup.

[AnimeRT]

I am willing to take part in this. I am using both 22 and 23 in order to get my projets completed.

[jenkmeister]

Thanks - We will be in contact shortly to set something up!

[tonycomley]

I'm still having this issue. More so than ever. Very happy to set up a video call. Please let me know a time.

[Thomsonx]

Yea this sucks, running with 64BG ram I (as one example of the many times this happens):

• Drop a 5 second MP4 into a comp
• Create an adjustment layer with basic colour correction
• Create a solid with simple particles (dust)

After that I get every memory error message possible. I make sure to have nothing else open while using AE, I remember when AE ran buttery smooth and we could have/use other software while it was open. Especially C4d, i've been using both together for 20 years now and never had an issue unitl these latest versions.

Perhaps adobe should get back to developing real software insted of mobile apps and cloud garbage. A company worth around 275.73 billion US dollars should be able to allocate some more resources to make sure thier software works.

[Branimator]

At this point Adobe might as well remove all M1 "optimization" code and start over. Everything was good till then. And I hate to bring it up but this is why I hate Apple. They always have to introduce some new tech that people have to try to adapt to and it screws it up for everyone, even windows users. I don't care about the m1, m2, etc. I care about my Intel, tried and true x86 architecture that has been great until Apple decided they want to make something new that is going to take 5-10 years to truly implement. Apple's new tech isn't worth crap if half the plugins are incompatible with it. They even rolled out a roll back OS to use x86 architecture again because they realized things aren't working and it's that bad. Apple's just over there screwing everything up for everyone because they want to try something new that won't be fully adopted and functional for 5-10 years. Makes no sense.  Develop it in the background and then release it in years when it is actually ready. You're a trillion dollar company and can afford to do so. 

[Warren Heaton]

@Branimator 

Most of the major After Effects plugins are M1 native.  

Why on earth should Adobe drop development of After Effects because a handful of users cannot configure their hardware?  That would leave all the users who are getting exceptional performance high and dry.  Seems the appropriate thing would be to maintain a forum where users can interact with other users and Adobe staff.

[Branimator]

There are plenty of plugins, not the mainstream ones, that are also trying to adapt to all this turmoil. I see it all the time, "such and such plugin is now m1 compatible." The point is that the tech is promising, but underdelivering when it renders people's machines useless unless you roll back (both Adobe and Apples faults for trying to move to fast with not enough testing). At this point the update wasn't even worth deploying because now they're just making things difficult for your customers. How is it taking 4+ versions and multiple betas to fix this? As for Apple's side of things I would expect nothing less than a pompous attitude of "I'm going to enter the game and not care about anyone or how I might be affecting their day to day workflow." I mean shoot.  Look at the way they handle the charging ports on their phones, etc... just stop being disrespectful to your consumers and do things in a better manner.  The fact that Apple released an OS rollback update to fix things back to x86  let's you know they know they f'd up.

[Warren Heaton]

@Branimator 

Apple hosts an annual developers conference and offers advanced access to hardware.  If a software publisher isn't ready to release their software, that's not an Apple issue in any way whatsoever.

If some Mac users need to stay on Intel based on the software they're running, why should all the other Mac users who are ready to take advantage of the fantastic performance have to wait? 

[Branimator]

I guess my point is why does Adobe feel the need to screw everyone over because Apple decides to make the "next best thing" which, by the way, it obviously isn't. It has undeniable problems. Also another point is Apple is just straight pompous with the way they do their business, which is another issue but also one worth mentioning because they start the absolute worst trends of nickle and diming their customers for everything or just not adopting standards that everyone wants because it's superior (usb c - specifically phone market). Not providing A/C adapters for their usb charged products was started by them, etc. You can't argue your way out of a company who had proven to care so little about their customer when they could easily provide these things for minimal cost.  I'd rather have fantastic performance all the time and not run into sad little roadblocks because no forethought was to be had. 

[Thomsonx]

No they aren't, most are "compatible" with a few being "native". I would also venture to guess there are way more AE users who aren't using a M1.

An even if that wasy the case, Adobe should be be able to write software that works no matter the hardware.

[Branimator]

The thing is it's such a new tech that even claiming compatibility is a funny thing because there's hardly any testbed. I mean just look at this huge mess that a massive company like Adobe hasn't been able to fix for 4+ versions now. I use plugins that have existed for years that don't even mesh well with media encoder, forcing me to export QuickTime files and then re-encoding to h.264 in media encoder, otherwise I get red X's and green frames due to their incompatibility. Adobe should be able to write code that works for whatever hardware, but obviously that's just not working for them at the moment. Here's to hoping someone can get this figured out for people that are paying for their products. 

[Warren Heaton]

I get red X's and green frames due to their incompatibility. 

By @Branimator

Neither of those are Adobe side issues.  

It would be great if Adobe had somehow purchased Red Giant instead of Maxon.  It wouldn't have guaranteed that it wouldn't log out and cause the red X (like what happens with Maxon One), but at least it would be under one roof (so to speak).

Green frames, 99% of the time, are graphics driver issues.  It might also be great if Adobe owned NVIDIA.  Might no prevent green frames, but at least it would be under one roof.