Unusable preview playback in After Effects CC 2019 (16.1.1)

[brittnell]

The latest version of After Effects has become near unusable for me, as I cannot get my RAM preview to play realtime (30fps) despite any changes I make to the settings, and what I believe is an otherwise well-spec'd system configuration. 

With 1080x1920 sequences, the best I ever seem to get is around 9fps... which just seems absurd.

I've gone through past posts about similar issues (which seem to rear their ugly head every few updates), and have tried all the various recommendations to no avail.

Any tips/tricks/insight/etc. would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping there might be a solution I'm missing beyond reverting back to CC 2018, which would be very disappointing and problematic.

Thanks in advance,

b

System specs: After Effects CC 2019 (16.1.1)

Windows 10 Pro

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core 3.00 GHz

128 GB RAM

Samsung 2TB 970 EVO SSD (x2)

100 GB After Effects Disk Cache

Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti (x2)

GeForce Driver 430.86 (05/27/2019)

Screen shot attached with most relevant settings visible:

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew · Accepted solution]

A few things to check:

- Update GPU Drivers
- Clear Memory (Edit > Purge > All Memory and Disk Cache)

- Reset Prefs / Rename Prefs folder (Edit > Preferences > General > Reveal Preferences in Explorer > then rename that folder to something else so AE creates a new one on re-launch)

- Restart your Computer

Did the same type of project playback in real-time on CC 2018? What does you comp look like, what effects and footage types are you using?

Are you letting the timeline cache before playing back?

[brittnell]

Thanks.

• The drivers listed above are the latest
• I've done the purge all disk/cache
• I've got "cache before playback" turned on
• I've restarted my PC (multiple times)
• The issue occurs across all projects, independent of number of layers, effects, or footage type... I just tried with a simple sequence of 1080 .jpg images, and got the same results (no effects, no layers, nothing "special")

I'll try renaming the Prefs folder, and let you know!

Edit: I forgot to mention that, no, I was not having this issue in CC 2018

[brittnell]

Resetting the Prefs seems to have solved the issue!

Talk about a "goose chase"! Maybe this tip should be stickied at the top of the forum?

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Awesome, glad to hear that worked!

[rickatron]

I had a similar issue with After Effects CC. I could not hear audio. I wasn't sure if it was related to installing the SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 6 plug-in. However, I renamed the preferences folder. Upon reatrting AE, everything worked perfectly.

[brittnell]

Have run into this problem a number of times since, and while renaming the prefs folder seems to help for a bit, it doesn't seem to be a long-lasting solution. 

I just ran into this again today, with the attached file dropping down to 9 frames per second.

I renamed the prefs folder, restarted the machine, and FPS went back up to 30.

However... This was only the case when After Effects was maximized to one of my two monitors. If I extended the interface across both monitors, the FPS dropped down to around 15fps.

I checked task manager while doing this, and didn't see any spikes in memory, cpu, or graphics card usage. I'm not sure what's going on here, but it definitely seems something isn't behaving as it should.

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Strange, just tested and multi-screen workspace doesn't affect Ram preview on my end. What's your memory allowance look like in Edit > Preferences > Memory?

Also, do you have a lot of scripts running in the background?

If you can try and reset your prefs, and then test periodically as you change your prefs back they way you like them, you might be able to find what is causing the issue.

[brittnell]

Hey Justin,

My memory looks like this:

     RAM reserved for other applications: 16 GB

     RAM available for After Effects: 111.9 GB

My installed scripts are these, but I don't think they should be running at startup (and none are used in this comp):

I'll keep poking around, and see if I can nail down the actual root of the issue...

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Gotcha, seems like the workspaces could be part of the issue. When you wipe your prefs, are you re-creating your workspaces or copying and pasting old ones?

[brittnell]

I've just been leaving the workspace default, as it's recreated.

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

But what panels are you putting on your secondary screen that's causing the slowdown?

[brittnell]

Oh, I'm just "minimizing" the After Effects window, then extending the bounds to the second monitor, so that timeline, composition window, etc. span across the full, double screen width.

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Hmm, I mean it could be using more GPU power which takes longer to render, but with your setup, I can't imagine you would feel that much of a performance hit.

Sounds like it might be a bug, check out the User Voice​ to see if anyone else is having the same issue that you can vote for. If not, then create a new issue.

[brittnell]

I was wondering the same thing, which is why I kept an eye on my task manager while fiddling with the window dimensions. Didn't see any change in CPU, memory, or GPU utilization, even though I could see the frame rate drop real-time between the two configurations (maximized to one window vs. spanning two). 

Thanks for the User Voice suggestion, I'll give it a go.

[brittnell]

Well, that was quick!

Here's the issue: Ram preview plays back slow on 4k monitor unless I hide timeline panel – Adobe video & audio apps

I just tested it. Spanned the interface across both monitors, hid timeline, and it played like butter!

What the...

Please Adobe, get this sorted!

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Cool, always good to know you're not the only one experiencing the issue. Thanks for posting the link for others to find, I went ahead and voted on it too.

[brittnell]

Hey Adobe! 

Can you please sort this out? It's been months, and multiple After Effects updates, without any apparent progress...😩

Working in the timeline, then having to close it every time I want to preview a change has a significant impact on my productivity and positive mental attitude, and I'm not sure how much longer I can continue to work like this!

Thanks,

b

[agile_thinking98A4]

I have the same problem! Have you found some solution?

[brittnell]

Unfortunately, no. I did notice your other post, and am disappointed to see that others think this is normal behavior... it's not. It's also not just some "quirk" we shouldn't ask questions about. It's a reproducible issue, where cached playback IS BROKEN when the timeline is visible. Closing the timeline restores normal, expected, full-speed playback, but but this is not a practical work-around, at all, and the underlying bug needs to be acknowledged and resolved!

[whitneyp53397063]

Hi Brittnell, I'm having the same issue and it's killing me. How are you "hiding" the timeline? If I close the timeline the comp viewer gets closed as well. If I open it in the comp viewer, the timeline automatically opens. Thanks!

[jakob_desognface]

I am experiencing the same problem and i am quite disapointed. With clients we run in situations that are unexceptable.

[jakob_desognface]

Hello Guys,

i also have simular playback problems, After Effects CC 2019 (16.1.3) 

RAM preview is filled, green render bar, but still not realtime playback.

I did the prefs and cache thing and also update drivers.  

[agile_thinking98A4]

The only solution I've found is to come back to AE CC 2017!! And I think that's absurbs!

[Marcos Schnaider]

The same here...

I have 4k monitor, all interface is slow after last update.

The only way to solve this is to change the resolution to fullHD.

But, I don't want to work at fullHD at 27 inches. Very blurry!

Before that worked!

Can anyone at Adobe fix this?