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vf.jeinselen
vf.jeinselen
Participating Frequently
March 14, 2019
Answered

(MacOS) Rendering slows/pauses when AE is not forefront or screens go to sleep

  • March 14, 2019
  • 22 replies
  • 10956 views

Is anyone else experiencing this? Sometime after my screen saver runs for a bit (it's not immediately tied to the screensaver), my screens go to sleep, or even just switching to a different application, After Effects 2019 slows rendering to a crawl. Just starting this thread in Chrome (5 minutes) created a three minute pause where AE didn't render anything. As soon as I switch back to AE it'll render a few frames, and keep rendering...till a few minutes after I switch back to any other application, where it slows/stops again.

Last night I set a number of sequences to render, all of them 2 seconds long. I set the screen saver to turn on after 1 hour, and display sleep after 3 hours, and made sure no other apps were open. Based on the frames rendered, an hour and a half after I left my computer (so not necessarily directly tied to the screensaver) After Effects dropped to about 3 frames every 4 hours or so. It took between 1 and 19 minutes to render each sequence...except after the monitors locked, it spent 14 hours barely rendering at all. Once I unlocked the displays, it finished that one sequence in a matter of minutes. It's now slowing down or pausing rendering every time I switch to a different program (I currently have four apps open - After Effects 2019, Chrome with 6 tabs, Activity Monitor, and Versions for SVN).

When at the forefront, After Effects is only using 1 or 2 out of the available 12 cores, and about 56GB out of the available 64GB RAM (according to the activity monitor it has about 11GB in compressed memory). CPU usage drops to about 1-2% of a single core when AE is not forefront. I assume this is what's happening when the screens lock as well (since it technically doesn't technically entirely stop rendering...it's just incomprehensibly slow).

Hardware: 2013 Mac Pro — 2.7 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5, 64 GB 1866 MHz DDR3, dual AMD FirePro D700 6144MB, 1TB SSD

Software: MacOS High Sierra, version 10.13.6 (latest update for this version, I can't upgrade to Mojave yet due to other software requirements)

After Effects: CC 2019, 13.0.3 (latest update)

Any ideas? I've never had issues with MacOS throttling background apps before (I just rendered a bunch of 3D assets the other day in a different app without a hiccup), nor have I had issues before with AE killing itself when it's not the centre of attention...which appears to be what's happening now?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Thomas Yang

    Thank you all for the information, that's very valuable.

    Here is the update: we have confirmed that for some output modules, the machine would still switch AE to AppNap mode. We have put a fix for it and will be available in the coming release: 16.1.2. In the mean time, you may want to try the Workaround I posted on Apr 18.

    Thanks,

    Thomas

    After Effects Engineering Team

    22 replies

    W
    weccleston
    Inspiring
    October 4, 2022

    Definitely should not be marked as "Solved".  Problem still exists.  And in Monterey, the Terminal command offered as a workaround no longer works.

    Macbook Pro M1 Max

    Monterey 12.5

    AE 22.6.0 Build 64

      mistfall
      mistfall
      Known Participant
      July 14, 2022

      I'm having this trouble with rendering stopping when I switch focus to another app, with the most current version of AE in 2022.

      Mac version.

      P
      Peter23526835my94
      Participating Frequently
      September 29, 2022

      Same problem here... my client is getting very angry

      latest version on M1 Max

      P
      Peter23526835my94
      Participating Frequently
      September 29, 2022

      switched to media encoder and it rendered fine... weird! However not always good to render from AE using media encoder as it doesn't keep the same history in the project and doesn't update in and out points of new versions etc.

      Darko Petrovic
      Darko Petrovic
      Participating Frequently
      September 8, 2021

      AE 18.4.1 (Build 4) still the same issue. To have it 2,5 years later after first report is the shame.

       

      Few seconds after I move focus from AE, Render Queue pause the rendering and immediately continues when I click back on AE.

       

      macOS Big Sur

      Version 11.5.2 (20G95)

       

      iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)

      Processor 4,2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

      Memory 64 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

      Graphics Radeon Pro 580 8 GB

      Darko Petrovic
      Darko Petrovic
      Participating Frequently
      September 23, 2021

      Screenshot of Activity Monitor / Energy while Render Queue put yourself on pause is attached. There is not issue with App Nap or Previenting Sleep in my case.

      I
      ionas_kaput
      Participant
      November 28, 2020

      Hi. I have 17.5.1. AE and rendering when screen is off is still an issue. Workaround with Terminal doesn't work as Terminal keeps saying to me "The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, NSAppSleepDisabled) does not exist"

       

      iMac 5k, Late 2015, Mac OS Mojave

      cocoua
      cocoua
      Known Participant
      November 29, 2020

      Hi, tha's weird, I have Mojave and this works for me:

       

      Possible Workaround:

      If you have confirmed that AE got switched to App Nap when there is active rendering in render queue. Here are the steps to shut down the App Nap feature entirely. Note this will shut down App Nap not only for AE, but for all application.

       

      1. Open Terminal

      2. Type in "defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled ". It should return '0' indicates App Nap is enabled.

      3. Disable it by typing in "defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES"

      4. Type in "defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled ". It should return '1' as App Nap is disabled in step 3.

      W
      Whiteinktv
      Participant
      May 28, 2020

      Hi Thomas, I'm on 17.01 still the same issue. Thanks!

      cocoua
      cocoua
      Known Participant
      May 29, 2020

      HI, disabling App Nap works, but you have to disabl it for the whole system

      S
      seanrowley
      Known Participant
      September 13, 2019

      Sept 13, 2019 and this is still a problem. I'm running the lastest Mojave and Adobe CC and I can't leave my computer alone while rendering. As soon as the blank screen saver kicks in, rendering slows to a crawl. This also happens when trying to render with Caps Lock on, which is supposed to be a time saver, not a render killer.

      P
      pcg
      Participant
      November 12, 2019

      I have he same problem: 2013 Mac pro, Mojave lastest version, - renders don't work over night.

      I would say that is a core functionality problem.

      I owned lots of versions of AE before it was turned ito a rental. Now it cannot render a lot of formats anymore and it cannot render over night anymore??

      This is not solved since april (!)

      It might be Apples compulsion to limit options throwing us another curve ball.

      but still

      sometimes, less is just less.

       

      I wish I could help

      seamartin1247
      seamartin1247
      Inspiring
      July 17, 2019

      I have the latest update of After Effects 2019 V16.1.2 and the issue is not resolved.

      I've opened the activity monitor whist rendering as has been suggested and when monitored the App Nap is static at "No" BUT the Preventing sleep is generally "Yes" but it does now and again change to "No"?

      CineRender is No - Yes

      VTDecoderXPCService is No - No

      AdobeCRDaemon is No - No

      VTEncoderXPCService is No - No

      If I put my MAC into sleep mode it stops rendering (drives are set not to turn off)

      When the system is left to automatically go into sleep the render fails with Cineware fault

      Please re-visit this because I'm having to render with my monitor on.

      Thanks

      Rameez_Khan
      Rameez_Khan
      Legend
      July 19, 2019

      Sorry to hear that you're still having issues. I'll share it with the engineering team.

      Thanks,

      Rameez

      J
      justinb92506862
      Participant
      June 21, 2019

      Just updated to 16.1.2 and this issue appeared while rendering dynamic link comps in Premiere. I wasn't having the issue before.

      Thomas Yang
      Adobe Employee
      Thomas YangCorrect answer
      Adobe Employee
      May 21, 2019

      Thank you all for the information, that's very valuable.

      Here is the update: we have confirmed that for some output modules, the machine would still switch AE to AppNap mode. We have put a fix for it and will be available in the coming release: 16.1.2. In the mean time, you may want to try the Workaround I posted on Apr 18.

      Thanks,

      Thomas

      After Effects Engineering Team

      cocoua
      cocoua
      Known Participant
      May 8, 2020

      Hi, I'm on version 16.1.3, when screen goes to sleep, rendering to frames would make the render x3 slower, but having the screen active, even using th computer would make it faster, as soon as I lock screen render start again to goe slower, between x2 and x3 slower...

        F
        Ferenc_85
        Participating Frequently
        May 21, 2019

        I have the same problem on both my iMacs (2012 and 2019). During long renders, the computer falls a sleep despite the correct settings in the system preferences.

        Yesterday I noticed though, that when I render to Prores the computer stays awake and finished the complete render of 9 hours. Rendering the same project to a PNG sequence makes my computer fall a sleep after 20-30 minutes.  When I render to Prores "Preventing sleep" is set to "Yes" in the Activity Monitor. When I render to PNG sequence it is set to "No".

        Not sure why this happens. I am glad I found this workaround, but I really would like to see this problem solved. Never had any problem with rendering overnight in the last 10 years and I really depend on these renders.

        Thomas Yang
        Adobe Employee
        Thomas Yang
        Adobe Employee
        May 21, 2019

        Thank you for confirming. We have put a fix and would be available in the coming release: 16.1.2.

        - Thomas

        michaelb37652740517128
        michaelb37652740517128
        Participant
        May 22, 2019

        Thanks for confirming the update patch. Hopefully it will resolve this issue.

        I can confirm that we are having the problem on ProRes export.

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