Massive memory leak in After Effects 2022 causes system instability & lockups

Report · Jan 30, 2022

Latest versions of After Effects 2022 and 2021 are causing system instability, using up 58GB of RAM and then freezing the entire computer even when the software is just idling in the background. There is a huge memory leak that no one is able to discover and "turning off multi frame rendering" does nothing to help the issue.

But I found a fix! I reverted to 2020 and now everything is working perfectly again. It's the exact same old after effects experience: slow, laggy, no real-time playback, except its 100 times better because it doesnt crash my entire system after 2 minutes of use.

Just a quick note, you have to directly contact Adobe using the support "Chat" to ask them to give you an installer file for AdobeAfterEffects17AllTrial and AdobeMediaEncoder14AllTrial and youll need AdobePremierePro14AllTrial if you want to be able to use dynamic link between Premiere still.

Have fun everyone! Maybe Adobe will one day fix the software we pay hundreds of pounds for yearly... I doubt it but who knows. Until then, ill just run software written two years ago.

Report · Jun 26, 2023

Hey Warren this has nothing to do with plugins.

thanks

Report · Jun 26, 2023

It sounds like, based on how you're working in After Effects, that you need more RAM.

Report · Jul 06, 2024

Why don't you leave and do something in life

Report · May 16, 2023

I don't know why most people do not notice this. first, you can just clear the cache from the purge menu, but in this case, you had to do it all the time :(. and the main problem for all of the people in this thread problem is the " Cache frame when an idle " feature, this feature is in AE since the 2022 version, and in the 2023 version, we don't have the button to just fkin disable it! if only we had that button we will all be saved, it is a small feature issue but causing a big ram leak problem, as long as the frame caching it will eat up all our ram, as big as we have!

we need After Effects competitors!

Report · May 16, 2023

@M Yudha

Are you not seeing Composition > Preview > Cache Frames While Idle?

Cache Frames While Idle disabled for Preview under the Composition pulldown menu

Report · May 17, 2023

I don't know if it was there, why don't they add it in the preference setting too? They have one panel dedicated to preferences > preview about this, the start second and all, we have it all there, but not the disable button haha, very friendly UI.

Thank you very much for that and sorry that you had to screenshot it for me and then I realize it haha

Report · Feb 06, 2023

I have same issue on late 2010 iMac. / 128G ram, i9 3.6 Core x 10, AMD Radeon Pro 5700 8G

Report · Feb 06, 2023

i also have system instability running NUKE 13. I believe the issue is perhaps in a library rather than primary code.

Report · Feb 06, 2023

I wonder when Adobe is going to address this issue. Its disrupting major projects on my side.

Just a question, has your Media Encoder started freezing during export at times?

Report · Mar 09, 2023

Same here. Amazing software that can crash every device without any problems.

Report · May 02, 2023

Getting a horrendous memory leak on render. It crashes the render after about 30 seconds. Its not that complicated of a project (AFAIK) Just a bunch of shape layers and a few video elements for panasche. Up late just trying to meet a deadline. Guess I'm going to try and render out to PSDs just to save my sanity.

Report · May 02, 2023

It actually rendered out of Media Encoder without crashing, a rare AME win! Not sure why FG AE (Both Beta and "Stable" are crashing) with the FG Render. Maybe AME uses a less aggresive version of the Multi-Frame render feature. Anyways best of luck. Sad we are still using a multi-frame render instead of an acual multi-theaded app.

Report · May 02, 2023

For real, multithread would be way more inclusive and diverse. All the major issues are still present in AE, even lagging interface with 2 high end video cards and with 256 gb ram

Report · May 02, 2023

Don't get me started I have about 50 unacknowledged bug threads, and the one I have seen acknowledged nothing happens anyways.

Report · May 16, 2023

I don't know why most people do not notice this. first, you can just clear the cache from the purge menu, but in this case, you had to do it all the time :(. and the main problem for all of the people in this thread problem is the " Cache frame when idle " feature, this feature is in AE since the 2022 version, and in the 2023 version, we don't have the button to just fkin disable it! if only we had that button we will all be saved, it is a small feature issue but causing a big ram leak problem, as long as the frame caching it will eat up all our ram, as big as we have!

we need After Effects competitors!

Report · Jun 26, 2023

Cache Frames When Idle isn't a RAM leak. It's using RAM.

Report · Jul 04, 2023

Sorry pal, but if AE doesn't have a serious problem of memory leak, the concept of "memory leak" needs to be redefined. I have been monitoring the behavior of EA through Windows 10 Task Manager and I can see that it's using a huge amount of RAM even with the simplest tasks (like rendering a composition containing only text and some animation presets). I've been struggling to keep AE running for more than a year and had tried every suggestion I found on the internet to no avail. Seriously, the last time I saw a bug that crashed other applications, caused a huge flickering over the displays and almost crashed the OS altogether was when I was learning to program in C about 30 years ago. At that time I learned that dangling pointers caused that as they could access any area of memory. Today OSs have memory protection, but maybe their designers were not told about what Adobe programmers would be capable of doing… By the way, I tried the suggestion of disabling "Cache Frames When Idles" and this seems to work as far as crashes are concerned, but AE still uses a huge amount of memory.

Report · Jul 12, 2023

I still have this issue, also tried the beta version, same problem, when i open a project itll for example use up 12gb of ram when previewing it, then i open another project, that one will add 20gb ram on top of it, i do this until it maxes out my 64gb ram and then it just crashes.. this used to not be like this, esp in simple projects, in the CC app where it lets u choose other versions i cannot go lower than cc 22, so i guess ill hit up support about an older version?
This does not happen on my laptop which runs the same up to date version, my laptop is intel, my new pc ryzen..

Report · Aug 02, 2023

I have 2023 and I am getting this issue everytime I try to work. Even testing with one, 30s mp4 and no adjustments. I have 64GB, I have purged caches, I have cache frames when idle off, I have started in safe mode and have no third party plugins running, I have no other apps running, my cache points to an HDD drive with more space than my cache allocation of 200GB - YET, I watch my RAM usage climb to over 50Gb till suddenly AE gives me an error that says it could not allocate some tiny bit of mem like 5mb and then it crashes. I have looked in CC for the old 2020 version but seems they only offer back to 2022 now? Though I don't know that I want that old of a version in the first place. What the heck is happening!?

Report · Aug 03, 2023

I'm also dealing with the same problem as you. After so long time without solving this issue, Adobe should allow AE users to download previous versions (e.g., 2021). Also, this problem has at least two threads. The other one is here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/low-memory-warning-in-after-effects-23-0-20....

Report · Aug 05, 2023

I finally mapped a big red "Purge Memory" hotkey to my Stream Deck just to make it easier, as this has become I need to do quite regularly whenever the app is open.

(AE 23.5 / M1 Studio 64GB / MacOS 13.4.1)

Report · Aug 05, 2023

1. We should not have to do that for the software to work.

2. I didn't have this issue just a couple years ago working with the same pipeline and files. Whatever Adobe developers THINK they have fixed or improved with the memory upates, pool or whatever else we don't know about has crushed the workflow of a big chunk of pro users. My guess is, they don't think we are important enough to worry about fixing this.

Report · Aug 05, 2023

not to mention that the memory cache purge is not the issue. my cache is never over a couple Gs when these memory errors happen.

Report · Aug 05, 2023

I even tried the "secret" pref setting disable layer cache and to purge every 10 frames. Doesn't change anything after 20 min, "can't allocate 100 mb of memory" or something ridiculous.

Report · Aug 13, 2023

Chiming in to say the same thing is happening with me. Within ten minutes of being inside a simple comp, my 64gb of ram is getting maxed out and after effects crashes. I've disabled all third party plugins, disabled idle render, etc. No issues at all with any other software (blender, resolve, etc).

Adobe should really be ashamed of this software.