When importing a large number of QuickTimes, my CPU usage spikes, initially causing a kernel panic.

[ckuehne]

Running After Effects 17.1.2, when importing a large number of MP4 QTs into a new project, the CPU useage spiked to almost 100%, and the first time ended up causing a kernel panic, and rebooted my machine. I've never seen this behavior before. I'm using a Mac Pro (2019), running MacOS Catalina 10.15.6.

[Warren Heaton]

Have you tried transcoding to your MP4 files to something extremly Mac friendly like Apple ProRes?

Also, are these MP4 inside of a QuickTime wrapper (that is, the file extension is .mov)?  That file type lost suppport when Apple deprecated QuickTime as a system driver for time based media back in 2013.

[ckuehne]

I'm keeping them as MP4s to save space. I'm working on a show that already requires severeal TBs of space (I'm working with EXRs that are about 150MB/frame), so I'm making these low-res QT temp reference files as small as I can to save more space. Making them all ProRes is not an option.  The extensions are all '.mp4'.

It was just surprising and made me uneasy that I've been using After Effects since version 3.0, and have never gotten a kernel panic doing something as simple as importing files. Crashing I can handle - a kernel panic casuing an immediate shut down of my machine that can cause corrupt files - that's not good.

The first 10 or so load quickly, and then all the ones after that load really slowly, and my CPU usage spikes. If it's an issue of compression - I don't know why the first ones load quickly with no spike in my CPU, and the later ones, do. That's why I think it's a bug in AE.