Installed RAM 6.9GB? Oh dear! But since it worked once, it's worth the troubleshooting: - Clear cache - Is there any error message when rendering? - Can you render preview at full resolution and with all effects (especially motion blur)? With only this bit of RAM, you might just get a couple of seconds, but it would be good to know, if preview is rendering. - Render everything as image sequence (PNG for instance). Does this work? (You can convert it to every movie format later) - What did you change from the last time to now? I noticed failed renders when I have more effects then RAM. - Can you render this on a different, more powerful machine? - Can you render this if you deactivate some of the effects (start with the blur) ... View more

I've seen AE using 10% of my CPU capabilities while rendering very basic stuff. Chances are high, AE is holding back itself in your case. While I was waiting for the render to complete, I read about aerender.exe and later wrote a basic render manager in python to get a better performance. I never ask much what AE should or could, but focused on finding a solution. Your screenshot reveals what AE is using all cores, but is not loading them up much. This is what annoys people - including myself. CPU load highly depend on the frame, effect, footage, ... If you are using the Force Motion Blur effect with 32 samples for instance, it will push the CPU to 100% at a very nice pattern. However, this does not speed up anything, since there is now even more so calculate. I don't know in detail how AE renders images, but it needs to rasterize everything before it can be processed. When working with shape layers or vectors, than there is this additional calculation. Also, you have to imagine that one layer of an HD image with alpha channel has around 66MBit and CPU has to do manipulations on those data with only 2048 Bit level 1 cache. Since it took around 100 CPU cycles to load data from RAM into level 1 cache, you might understand that your system is waiting for data most of the time when rendering. CPU is simply not made for massive data manipulation - that's why GPUs envolved. Adobe missed the good point to switch to full GPU support and tries to keep up now. But this process will took years, for sure. You can launch two render processes. This will reduce render times by almost 50%. But since even one render process already uses 2/3 of your RAM, there is not much to benefit from a 2nd render process. Because once out of RAM, render time increase in large amounts, like 10 times from normal. You can validate this if you close AE, reopen it and limitedly start rendering. Keep an eye on the RAM load. If it is below 50% most of the time, you could start a second render process. As said, dealing with aerender.exe is very easy. A simple batch will do it - not comfortable, but will do it. I only noticed a sluggish UI when a script or extension hangs, compositions are not rendered in preview, a lot of audio layers with displayed waveforms, a lot of expressions - especially when for or while loops are involved - or just a bad day for the computer. In most cases restarting the machine, rendering everything, closing plugins, clearing cache or just working for a couple of hours solved those issues. You can try to reset your preferences (Reset After Effects Preferences), update all drivers, reinstall AE, get rid of unused software, clear temp folder, create and try with a new OS user account or as last option, reinstall OS and everything. For a more accurate advice, we need your computer specs and a screenshot of your AE UI and comp will be helpful. Also a screencap of the issue would help much. ... View more

About the rendering: I think there is at least on post per week with the same "issue". Yes, AE could perform much better in general, but right now, everybody have to deal with it the way it is. Actually, the render engine did improved over the last major updates. No, AE won't use all your cores in general. This highly depends on your project down to the current frame. Generally, core rates are preferred over core count - rather 4 cores @4.5GHz then 6 cores @3.30GHz. To benefit from a fast system when rendering, plugins like RenderGarden, BG Renderer or RenderBoss are needed (or you write your own script - it's not that hard to get the aerender.exe to work). However, they only make sense, if you have lots of RAM, since they do launch multiply render processes where each process needs it own space in memory. Let's focus on the slow UI -  there is not much you can do about the rendering times. ... View more

About the hardware: for 1729$ you get a very decent PC with at least a nice, high rated i7 and 64 GB of RAM and some fast NMVe drives, too. About the workflow: if you background set and the camera movement fit, you can render this as PNG sequence (for instance) over night and make all the text animations, where timing might be very critical, with the rendered background. ... View more

About the worn-out aspect: I used to have an Cache-SSD (Samsung 860 Pro) and after I checked the TBW after 5 years of constantly use, it was not close to anything to worry about. I don't remember the number and I can't look it up right now, but it was something like only 10 till 25% of overall TBW used. Latest test shows, that official TBW numbers are below of that those drives can actual handle, too. It's an aspect, but not a very huge one, I admit. However, following Murphy's Law, I rather separate critical and non-critical parts of the computer physically. ... View more

I prefer to put the cache on it's own drive - as said. The reason is, that the OS drive does write or read data, even if this is not much. Also, OS swaps the RAM to this disk and than maybe there is a security scanner, which randomly checks the files. All those operations - even if not much in summery - interfering the cache read/write process. And if I can, I want to make this process as ideal as possible. Also, cache drive get's worn out faster. It will took a long time until it dies, but I want to assure that I only have to replace an non critical SSD/NVME when it happens. In addition, there is the space aspect. When I can have 500GB or 1TB for cache, why share it with OS and software? Those drives are not that expensive, especially SSDs. ... View more

Ahh, I though the drip was already precomposed. To speed it up, you need to put all those 15 layers in a composition and place this instead of the 15 layers in your main composition. You can just mark those 15 layers and press CRTL+SHIFT+C. If the outcome is not smooth enough, you can try frame blending, but I thing the outcome will still not be good enough. See it by yourself. For the other way around, you have to gather all layers into a precomps, as much as possible. You can put the base-layer into precomp 1. Than the drip in precomp 2 (even if not necessary at this point, I would precomp this, too, for the better handling). Than cone layer and matte layer in precomp 3. If this is not working out, put the matte layer into precomp 4. So you actual just replace all layers with their precomps to get the time-remap option. Time remapping have to be the same in all precomps (instead of the drip, of course). You can just create all keyframes needed (see my other post about that), then mark all of them and move them at once. If this not turns out the way you want, please make a little screen capture of the issue and your composition window. I can only guess right now, what your project and outcome looks like. ... View more

I would put OS and Software on the SSD. It is fast enough and you are not spending the whole day opening software or rebooting the computer. So you hardly benefit from the speed of an M.2. I always put the cache on it's one drive, M.2 in my case currently. If readings from Windows are correct, AE only transfer data with less than 100MB/s to the cache (I'm doing a lot of motion graphics, no idea how this change when making VFX), so there is not really potential to speed things up. M.2 however has the shortest response times and can handle the most I/O operations, which is for sure useful for the cache drive. Use a 2nd M.2 for project and footage if you like. I'm working with a NAS, too. Connection is 1GBit/s, NAS can output 400MByte/s and this only bottlenecks when working with 4K video, which I hardly do. When working with motion graphics, character animations and stuff like that, I usual spend more time hitting the RAM border or waiting for the preview rendering. Loading assets, even with many layers, is not really an issue or noticeable. ... View more

You are working with tracking data, so the timing is kind of fixed. Instead of making everything slower, I would make the drip faster. This is very easy, just right click on the layer, search for time and in the submenu time remap. This gives you 2 keyframes, one at layers start, one at layers end. If you move the last keyframe in time to the left, the layer gets played back faster. This obviously will skip some frames. If you will make everything slower instead, the best way is to use time remap, too. Make sure, the layers in question are precomps (otherwise there is no time option), create a new keyframe where the slow down should start and another where it should end and move the last 2 keyframes to the right until you have the timing you want. Good luck! ... View more

All of them? Oh dear! You can try the following: - new project - import damaged project into new one Good luck! ... View more

You might be faster, if you just keyframe the rotation. To make this work, you need to hold the last value. Like the character walking for a while and the trees are rotated to 25. Then the character stops for 2 seconds, but the trees stay at 25 for those 2 seconds. The only way to do this in AE is the stupid one: repeat the complete rotation calculation from the beginning to the given point for every frame and layer over and over again. To calculate the rotation, you need to link it to the character. Assuming you are not using DUIK for the walk cycle, you need, for instance, the left foot movement amount, but only x and only while y has a certain value (aka when the foot is moving over the ground from the very front to the very back position) and use right foot movement amount x, when y is above a certain value (aka when left foot is over the ground and moving more in y direction then in x) and use those values as rotation, but added up frame by frame, multiplied with some abstract value for offset and fine-tuning. Once the algorithm is set up, you just need to cycle through all frames to get your final rotation at the given point. The longer the movie and / or the more characters, the slower AE will get, since it has to calculate more and more. By slower, I mean dead slow! I wrote an expression for DUIK which moves the character as it walks. But it turns out so slow, that I converted the expression into keyframes once the walk was set up and finished. Have a look to get the idea: DUIK Bassel Walk Cycle Mover Cheers, Martin ... View more

What about the autosave files? ... View more

Have you tried to render it without GPU support? Do you get a full resolution preview in AE? ... View more

Since the cone is already tracked and placed, you can just parent the drip to the cone, without applying the tracking data twice or copying transition values. Just place the drop - no matter if image sequence or composition - where it should be in the frame you are looking at and parent it to the cone. ... View more

Try this expression on Evolution property: loopTime = 180; t = time % loopTime; w1 = t * effect("Mood Lighting - amorphous")("Evolution Speed") w2 = (t - loopTime) * effect("Mood Lighting - amorphous")("Evolution Speed") ease(t, 0,  loopTime, w1, w2); It neatless loops the value after 3 minutes (180 sec). The effect appearance repeats, but nobody will be likely to see this. ... View more

You are right - you can open MOGRT, but it creates a new project so basicly it's the same like importing an existing project. No updates, too. You can try animation presets (just mark all layers and properties and drag them into the effect and preset panel) but I don't know if this turns out with the flexibility you want. I would create master projects with the animations you need over and over again and build them up with expressions and UI elements (slider and checkboxes and so on), so you can change them quickly for the whole project if you have to. I also would make sure that the client approves the animations before mass production starts. If you have to make changes on all animations afterwards, you can charge the extra work, at least. ... View more

By scripting you are referring to expressions I guess. Actual scripts are always in English and work on every plattform. Expressions - however - gets broken if they are not coded properly for international use. If the project depend on project file sharing, it should be a prerequisite how the share exactly should look like. And if you depend on other peoples project, you can demand that they code properly and vice versa. It's not that hard to use matchnames and effect indexes. But the easiest solution for this language mess is to use an Englisch AE. You don't have to switch OS language or keyboard layout to do so. Maybe this helps a bit. ... View more

I'm not sure what you want to achive, but the visual outcome reads to me like linking the object scale to z-axis of the camera. ... View more

Have a look at Essential Graphics, too. I'm not sure how it behaves on updates, but it is ment to manage preset animations. ... View more

Not sure if I unterstood you correctly but that's AEscript main page: After Effects Plugins - aescripts.com - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com And this might also be a good ressource to check for scripts: https://www.aenhancers.com/ Cheers, Martin ... View more

Maybe it's an indicator from some effect to show you, that you are below full resolution? ... View more

Switch off and on every layer and see, if the dot disappears. It has to be somewhere... ... View more

AE is not really made to run on a laptop. I am working on a overclocked i7 (4,8GHz, 4 Cores) with 64GB of Ram and it is still laggy. Cut down your animation into smaller pieces and maybe work with low-res jpegs as proxies. You can also render proxies overnight within AE for every part you have finished animating. Work in los-res as much as possible. If it depends on a precise preview, temporally switch to a higher quality. If you are using AE regularly, get yourself a PC. AE is optimized for Intel/Nvidia/Windows and you will get a high-end machine for the quarter of the price of a "quiet good" Apple. And actually there is no high-end Apple right now. ... View more

I have usually a voice over and soundeffects. I edit both right in AE, since there is not really much to edit and I have a nice plugin for sounds (animation composer from Mr. Horse). In this scenario, I can export the image as PNG sequence and then reinport it into AE and export everything as H264 (with sound of course) again. For the 2nd export, I use MediaEncoder and I recommend creating an "export" comp which has only image sequence and main comp (with turned off video) in it. It prevents from messing things up and even if image content is not visible because of another layer (in this case PNG sequence), AE somehow take it into account, too, and rendering takes longer. It's easier to switch off one layer instead of 50+, you know... About the RAM: get as much as you can afford and as much, as CPU and Mainboard can handle. I am currently on 64GB, but worked quiet well with 32GB for a couple of years. ... View more

You should learn to life with it - sorry, no better news at the moment, because your computer is pretty weak for AE, especially RAM. Have a look into your system information when rendering, I guess RAM is at limit. In this case, you can't benefit from render manager, since they need lots of RAM due to parallel render jobs running. AE rendering or Media Encoder doesn't matter, you render with the AE engine in both cases. My setting for H264 and internet upload is usually 1080p, 12MBit, VBR. And I always render into PNG Sequence and convert it to H264 afterwards. If the computer hangs or you have to interrupt rendering, you don't loose the whole rendering. ... View more

I wouldn't bother rendertimes that much. Just get used to it and think of them in advanced. As said, the rendering depends on a lot of things. Maybe your RAM and Cache config can handle one lens flare fairy nice, but a 2nd bust them and the computer needs to reload data from hard drive more often, which tooks from CPUs point of view like "forever". Check out some render managers like BG Renderer or RenderGarden, or RenderBoss to improve render speed. I recommend reading this forum about those add-ons. There are several things to know before get started - mostly hardware related. About the Codecs: - if you plan to contine editing your AE video use a high quality codec like DNxHD185X, ProRes 4444, CineForm and prepare yourself for very large files - if AE is the last node in your pipeline and you just want to upload the video next, H264 is okay, but check the technical specs of the plattform you want to upload (yt and vimeo has different specs and you don't want to get your video converted automatically by them) ... View more

The fastes troubleshooting would be, if you upload the project file (dropbox or something). In the meantime, restart your computer (yes, this is still a thing in computer business) and make sure that AE previews your main comp at full fps. Actually instead of speeding things up, it's more likely that your preview is slower than realtime and it looks speeded up after final render, because now it's real-realtime. Also, please show us all your expressions. You can change fps with expressions, too. Thank you! ... View more

Not sure if this works, but you can reduce fps with posterizeTime(framesPerSecond) expression. Good luck! ... View more