M1 Ultra performance extremely disappointing - no faster than 2019 Intel MBP

Report · Jun 23, 2022

I recently upgraded to an M1 Ultra Mac Studio from a 2019 Macbook Pro (Intel) in hopes of avoiding abysmally slow preview times and crippling UI lag. The results could not be more disappointing.

The M1 Ultra shows no performance advantage over the 2019 Intel whatsoever. Moreover, I encountered the very same UI lag within 10 minutes of using After Effects.

I uploaded a video to YouTube illustrating the problem. The description goes into detail. To repeat:

/ The comparison involves: M1 Ultra Mac Studio (128GB RAM, 20 cores) running After Effects (Beta) 22.6.0. 2019 Intel Macbook Pro (32GB RAM, 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9) running After Effects 18.4.1.

/ This is a 4K motion graphics project consisting of deeply nested comps containing a combination of hand-drawn 4K animation frames, vector graphics, masks, and very limited effects (mostly Set Matte for complex masking). Many nested layers have continuous rasterization enabled. The project contains no 3D layers or effects. No 3rd party effects were used.

I'm hoping that other M1 users or Adobe support can assist me in troubleshooting the slow RAM preview. I expected it to be at least three times faster on the M1 Ultra. I'm stunned at how closely it matches the 2019 Intel MBP.

Could this be a configuration issue? It's configured to use Mercury GPU Acceleration (Metal). The project was originally created in Adobe After Effects 2021 (18.4.1) if that helps. In addition to the latest beta, I've tried using the latest official version, 22.5.0, which I believe has native M1 support.

Report · Jun 23, 2022

This is a common bug that hopefully Adobe will fix soon. Happens with most Macs when they should be powerful enough to run AE. In the new 22.5 update there was several Mac fixes, so make sure you update. https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/m1-mac-extremely-slow-solved-but-now-over-1...

I don't think the recent updates did much, because I still see a lot of Mac-related issues on the forums. Guess the new update didn't do that much 😕

~Jake

Report · Oct 14, 2022

I'm having the exact same issue on the same spec machine. I expected to avoid lag in AE and Premiere, but it's absolutely appalling. I'm only commenting on here in the vague hope that if people keep reporting it as an issue, Adobe might actually do something to sort it out. This issue is clearly not down to our machines.

Report · Oct 27, 2022

Did you ever fix this?

I've recenetly got a M1 Ultra Studio and the RAM prevews are non-existent.. Just do not work?

Report · Oct 27, 2022

No, I rang Adobe and they didn’t have a clue. They disabled the plugins on my Mac and when that didn’t work, they rapidly jumped off the call! I was hoping the most recent update would help, but it hasn’t. Premiere and AE are virtually unusable on my Mac Studio. My inkling is that the software just isn’t optimised for M1 chips, but they won’t admit it!

Sent from my iPhone

Report · Oct 27, 2022

I'm so dissapointed. I'm currently working on my old iMac Pro that i upgraded from as that was getting really slow.

So i've currently got a £6,000 Mac Studio sat next to me collecting dust becuase it just doesn't work..

Report · Nov 16, 2022

I feel you too, I'm experiencing it myself too. So disappointed that Adobe doesn't listen to the user! The recent update made it worst too, I'm doing some simple animation and it takes years to render!

Report · Dec 01, 2022

I have the Mac M1 Ultra also, please someone let me know when this is fixed and AE is able to work with my computer. Paying 4 grand to have a slow computer is not awesome.

Report · Mar 14, 2023

Same situation here.
Mac Studio M1 Ultra 128GB Memory, 48 Cores GPU.
Very bad performance in almost all Adobe Apps.
I mostly use After Effects and Premiere, and the performance is really bad.
UI lag all the time. Change a simple parametre as position, or scale, or tweaking some color adjustments, it doesn´t refresh until you move one frame forward or backward. It´s frustrating!

Report · Jan 07, 2024

It happen on me too, very dissapointing experience. It is not empowering the creatives with those slow speed!