Proxy layers render slower than original. Video layers in general are extremely slow.

[Gijs_]

When I'm exporting a composition, using proxy layers of simple elements, it takes a lot more time than disabling the proxy and having it render 'from scratch'. Or it's barely any faster.

If I'm adding a single video to a new composition to render it out again as a test it's extremely slow.

In this case AE only has to read the videoframe and rerender it without doing anything, and I'm getting 2-3 fps.

Shouldn't proxy layers always render quicker than the original, regardless how sophisticated or simple the composition?

Is there any codec that handles video better/faster in AE?

I'm using prores 422/4444.

It's such a shame, since old versions (pre 2014) handled video much faster.

We have faster computers with slower AE performance.

[Rick Gerard]

Check the frame size and frame rate of the Proxy. It's easy to get that fouled up. 

Some system details and workflow details would help us diagnose your problem.

[Gijs_]

It's a 1920x1080, 60 fps composition.

I'm using a M1 macbook pro, though it's faster than my old workstation(W10, 6700k, 32gb ram) in 3d and most AE motion, it seems far slower in AE with video. I'm hoping this is contributed to not being a native Apple Silicon app yet, so a future release might fix this.

I did a test on my old workstation in Windows 10, and it rendered @ 20-40 fps (can't recall specifically).

The same composition with one video layer on the M1 got only 3 fps, which regardless of lacking a native version seems tremendously slow.

[Rick Gerard]

First, there is probably no reason at all to have the proxy files 60 fps. Unless you are trying to simulate the look of game footage or need to have a 60 fps comp. The only thing most of your audience might be gaining is a little more of a video and less than a movie experience. Only a small percentage of a general audience can tell the difference and YouTube will seerve up 30 fps video to almost all of the people viewing the completed project anyway, because that's what they do to save bandwidth.

What resolution is the original footage? What is the frame rate of the original footage? 

I am also not sure why you are rendering footage (exporting) using proxy footage. Seems like a waste of time because it can't be used in a final edit or other AE projects because neither the NLE nor AE will know that the footage is a proxy, and even if it did, there would be no original to replace it with.

I'm using an M1 Mac also. I am working on an hour-long documentary that was all shot 4K, is mostly ProRez and Red footage, and I am having no problems at all with any of my comps and I am not rendering proxies. Some of the original work done on the film I am working on had proxy footage created by another editor for some of the 4K Red footage. It was all 720p, but I have not used any of it in the current edit because it has not been necessary.

If you have to stick with this workflow you might consider rolling back AE to a previous version or trying the Beta version if you have access to it. I am not having any issues at all currently with the last 3 releases of After Effects on my M1 Mac.

[Gijs_]

Thanks for the reply.

"First, there is probably no reason at all to have the proxy files 60 fps."

Sure there is, to reduce the final render time of my composition.
Maybe there's a misunderstanding with the word 'proxy', I'm not using it as a temporary replacement, I'm using it to replace precomps within a big comp to relieve my system of having to rerender it during the final export. The idea is, the moment I want to render a final export, it only needs to compound several proxies, into one file. That's why I'm rendering everything at 'final' spec.

"Unless you are trying to simulate the look of game footage or need to have a 60 fps comp.
The only thing most of your audience might be gaining is a little more of a video and less than a movie experience. Only a small percentage of a general audience can tell the difference and YouTube will seerve up 30 fps video to almost all of the people viewing the completed project anyway, because that's what they do to save bandwidth."

60fps is needed in my projectspace.
Regardless the 60 fps is not an issue in the problem I'm posing. It's video performance in AE on a M1.
As I pointed out in my previous post I'm hoping this is because of the non-native version of AE on M1.

"What resolution is the original footage? What is the frame rate of the original footage?"

I'm creating my comp from scratch with video added in, so it's basically irrelevant in my perfomance question, 1920x1080 60 fps is the final output spec. The video elements are about 5000x3000, which I've already scaled down 50% with a proxy. So it wouldn't need to access those big frames during the final export. Fun fact, as it turns out, it barely impacted the performance in a positive way. Might as well not have rendered proxies...

"I am also not sure why you are rendering footage (exporting) using proxy footage. Seems like a waste of time because it can't be used in a final edit or other AE projects because neither the NLE nor AE will know that the footage is a proxy, and even if it did, there would be no original to replace it with."

That's part of the 'proxy' misunderstanding. As I've said I'm using them for final export.

"I'm using an M1 Mac also. I am working on an hour-long documentary that was all shot 4K, is mostly ProRez and Red footage, and I am having no problems at all with any of my comps and I am not rendering proxies. Some of the original work done on the film I am working on had proxy footage created by another editor for some of the 4K Red footage. It was all 720p, but I have not used any of it in the current edit because it has not been necessary."

You're probably using premiere? Sure, video works super smooth in PR.
I'm talking about AE, and not editing, but motion using video.

"If you have to stick with this workflow you might consider rolling back AE to a previous version or trying the Beta version if you have access to it. I am not having any issues at all currently with the last 3 releases of After Effects on my M1 Mac."

Well I've been considering my options.
I might have to start using premiere as the primary engine to my motion pieces. The big drawback however is that when I'm moving video elements in sync with motion, and that motion has expressions in after effects, there is no way to get those video layers to behave the same in premiere. Since I can't paste or create those kind of keyframes in PR.

I've tried the beta version, the multiprocessing is very nice but still extremely unstable and not usable for critical projects. Rolling back to a previous version of Big Sur would open up the option to scripts like 'Render Garden'. So I might give that a try, although with 16gb of ram there's only so much you can do with multiple instances..

So I either wait until Adobe releases a native M1 version which solves this problem, and hoping this won't take another 2 years for it to be released. Or I need to go back to a windows workstation/hackintosh, although I'm not looking forward to windows or having to configure a hackintosh again.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Most folks use the term pre-render since a proxy is used to refer to a lower rez version of an asset - oftentimes, the original asset is a high rez footage with a high datarate and a proxy is created, ideally within AE. This prooxy should ideally be 1/4 the rez of the original footage and rendered to a CODEC that is less computationally intensive; something like a Constant BitRate, 5MBps or 10MBps, H264.

On your specific issue, how have you used or re-introduced your pre-render into the render chain? ANd have you disabled the composition and all of its layers that were used to render these pre-renders after you introduced the pre-render into the render chain? 

[Gijs_]

Pre-rendered, thank you, that was the term I was looking for.

"On your specific issue, how have you used or re-introduced your pre-render into the render chain? ANd have you disabled the composition and all of its layers that were used to render these pre-renders after you introduced the pre-render into the render chain? "

Exactly.

Say for instance I have composition with a background with some elements, some video footage on top of that, and on top of video footage some other elements. I'd render background and front elements as 2 pre-rendered videos, turn off those layers and replace them with the prerendered versions, compound all 3 (background, main video, top) as final export. On the M1 this is excruciatingly slow. As a test, I put one of those pre-rendered layers in a single comp and export it, a single video layer, just to see where the timesink was in the composition. To my surprise this video only rendered at 3 fps. Much slower than the original composition it replaced. On my old windows workstation the prerendered layers would render fine. So this really feels like an Apple Silicon issue.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Another critical variable is disk speed. Are the drives usde in the M1 and Windows systems similar? 

Here is a list of Adobe Apps that run natively on the M1 - https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/apple-silicon-m1-chip.html

[Gijs_]

Drives are about the same speed, NVME ssd, so about 2000gb+ in read and write speed.

So re-rendering a video with a bitrate of about 50MB/s shouldn't stress the I/O that much.

[Rick Gerard]

Make sure you run speed tests on your external drives. A cheap cable or a defective one can reduce read/write speed by 90%. I have the fastest external storage I can get on my M1 Mac and my speeds are around 800, which is close to the limit for a thunderbolt cable.

2000 would be the speed of an internal SSD drive. Here's my M1's internal drive:

Swap the cable from my fastest external SSD to a plain USB-C cable and this is all it will do.

Any time I have any kind of suspected speed issues Black Magic Speed Test is the first app I open. Most of the time the problem can be traced to a cable.

[Gijs_]

I have a thunderbolt 3 external drive doing about 2500mb read and 1800mb write in black magic disk test

Disks or cables are really not the issue here.

It wouldn't explain why premiere can export these videos in 15s compared to 15+mins in after effects on the same system.

[Rick Gerard]

After Effects always takes longer to render than Premiere Pro because of the way the layers in AE are combined. Render time in AE depends on everything you do in After Effects and the format you choose to use when you render. 

If you embed an AEP file by importing or by using Dynamic Link to create a comp from a cut in the Premiere Pro sequence and you export (render) using Premiere Pro, another copy of After Effects opens in the background and that renders the video before Premiere Pro can render the layer in the sequence. The slowdown can be monumental. If your render time for a full resolution/full effects ram preview in AE is 1 or 2 frames per second, which is not uncommon for a 4K compositing shot with a couple of layers and some fairly simple effects, the render time in Premiere Pro for that embedded comp can easily be one or two seconds per frame instead of 1 to 2 frames per second. 

Any time I have complex effects to add to a Premiere Pro sequence I render a DI (digital intermediate) using a visually lossless, frame-based format like ProRez, DNxHR, EXR sequence use that rendered sequence to replace the linked comp in the Premiere sequence timeline. The only time I ever keep the dynamic link active for rendering is when my AE comp will render at about half the frame rate or better. That means that if I use Dynamic Link to create a comp, and I do that all the time, The only time I do not replace the linked section is when the AE comp will preview at full resolution at half the frame rate or better. 

One more thing. I would love to know what kind of external thunderbolt drive you are using so you can match internal drive read write speeds. I did a ton of research and I'm using the very latest and fastest external storage that I can buy and as you can see, my read write speeds are very close to the published best speeds for any external storage. I'd love to match the read/write of my internal drive if I could.

[Gijs_]

ORICO Thunderbolt 3 Nvme M.2 SSD Case.

[Rick Gerard]

I have 3 of those - You see my speed with 2 different cables. What cable are you using? I use the ones that came with the encolossures. 

[Gijs_]

Not sure, I've moved some cables around since I got the OWC Thunderbolt 4 hub.

Only thing I can say is that I have it directly connected to one of the M1 thunderbolt ports.

When I used a dock or hub the speed dropped significantly.

I use at as a main bootdrive instead of the internal ssd, so that might has to do something with it as well, though doubtful.