Extremely Slow Preview in After Effects CC 2017

[#1]

Hello,

I have an hp z800 machine with the following specs.

1. Processor: Intel Xeon X5660 @ 2.8 GHz ( 2 Processors)

2. Installed Ram: 32 GB

3. 256 GB SSD for Windows and a Separate 120 GB SSD for Disk Cache

4. GPU  Nvidia Quadro 4000 (2GB)

With this configuration I am unable to preview properly in After Effects. Please click on the link below, I have recorded a screen capture of the actual problem:

Dropbox - after effects preview too slow .mp4

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thank you.

[#2]

Hello,

I have an hp z800 machine with the following specs.

1. Processor: Intel Xeon X5660 @ 2.8 GHz ( 2 Processors)

2. Installed Ram: 32 GB

3. 256 GB SSD for Windows and a Separate 120 GB SSD for Disk Cache

4. GPU  Nvidia Quadro 4000 (2GB)

With this configuration I am unable to preview properly in After Effects. Please click on the link below, I have recorded a screen capture of the actual problem:

Dropbox - after effects preview too slow .mp4

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thank you.

[#3]

You are using a lot of presents all within pre-comps. So I wouldn't be that surprised it is slow. Maybe your expectations are higher than mine, but After Effects isn't that great at processing long timelines with effects on. Is it quicker to preview when you drill down into the comps themselves? Supposedly there are approved Adobe After Effects hardware list you could check this. I tend to render out chunks and bring them into a video editor.

[#4]

So you mean that I can't have a good preview no matter what I do. There has to be a solution. Is my RAM not sufficient enough?

[#5]

Not necessarily, you could use 'draft fast' in the preview settings. Obviously, it won't look like the final render, but it is enough to see the speed. Seeing the final render in real time is very demanding with all the motion blur on. Did you try increasing the RAM setting, did it help?

[#6]

The amount of RAM reserved for After Effects is 28GB but the problem is that it is not using all Ram allocated to After Effects as you can see in the screen capture.

[#7]

Using all the RAM may not help the speed.

Have you also looked at the preview settings for playback? Window > preview? Options such as quality, frame skip and so on. There's a lot of settings there, which help with the preview. Again it reduces the appearance but helps with speed.

[#8]

I changed the settings in the preview  it did help a bit but still not what I was expecting. Shouldn't I be getting a good preview?Is there noway to get a good preview?

[#9]

I think you should turn the motion blur off. Turn it on just when you render your animation. It would really help.

Then.. Unfortunately AE cannot really use all those cpu cores you have. Most of the time it uses just a single core, which in your case has a 2.8 ghz clock speed. A single cpu like an Intel i7 7700k, which has 4 cores but runs at 4.5ghz, would be mush faster.

[#10]

I do see "preview" but it does not give me any options you mentioned:

here's a screenshot of what I get:

Dropbox - preview.png

[#11]

I just searched it online and found out that I needed to pull the window down.