AE is considerably slower than Premiere with H.264 encoding via AME

[kman1898]

I love using After Effects but I have a workflow problem. Let's use a simple example. If I take a simple hour long clip that's mp4 and cut out a few pieces and encode the result into h.264 using adobe media encoder it takes over two and a half hours. But if I want to do the same exact edits via premiere an encode again using adobe media encoder, using the exact same output settings, it takes less than 30 minutes. I personally do more work in After Effects but what is causing this bottleneck? 

I'm using a i9 9900k with 1 tb nvme, 32 gb ram and a gtx 1080

[Rick Gerard]

It actually makes perfect sense. Premiere Pro is an NLE designed to edit video, After Effects is a compositing app that takes the source footage, renders each pixel with all of its properties, looks for the other things that you are doing to the pixels with other layers or effects, then renders an output of that frame, then starts the whole process over again. Premiere Pro renders a stream of pixels from the source file just like a media player, then if you have not done anything to the stream of video like changing the color, adding titles, or any of the other things you can do in an NLE, it just sends the original file, complete with the compression and the IBP frames if you are using a MPEG compressed original to the rendering engine to be simply copied if the compression settings are the same.  

Cutting up an hour-long clip in AE is a huge waste of time. AE was designed for and is only really suited for doing things to a shot that you cannot do in an NLE. Editing video in AE is a lot like driving nails with a screwdriver. You might eventually get the job done but it's a lot easier and faster to use the tool designed for the job.