Slow Finder import of image sequences from external drive - Mac Silicone- resolved

Recently upgraded Mac to M2max Studio, under OS14.1.1  and I was finding when attempting to import choosing a folder containing a large number of image sequences within After Effects from an external drive, that it was taking a very long time to load the folder; the greater number of files within that folder the longer it took to load before I could select the first image in that sequence, ie. 3000+ images 30secs.

However I realised that this was happening not only in After Effects but all other apps (just so happens AE is where I usually open images sequences into). So it seemed to be an OS Finder related issue.

This has now been resolved...

It was because my existing external drive (ssd) used to import was formatted under the older MacOS-journaled. However reformatting to APFS has now resolved the issue.

I've always had a preference to work from external drives rather than clutter the internal system drive for over 20 years, especially with video and animation work. And the previous Intel Mac (OS Monterey) never had a problem with the older external drive format, obviously the silicon OS works differently.

So just thought I'd share this.

Use the APFS format if you work on external drives!

🙂👍