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Laptop sufficient for AE?
Hi,
Apologies for what is probably a very dull request but I was hoping to get some general advice about computers’ applicability for AE. I’m planning on giving a year over to developing content for an educational website using AE and whilst I’m relatively new to AE and essentially on a steep learning curve, I have realistic expectations of what my output can be expected to look like. In other words, my content will not be very elaborate, 2D but I do rely on quite a few plugins to do small jobs for me.
I have a laptop that I thought would suffice for the task but am running into some issues. It is a:
DELL XPS 15 7590
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz
Installed RAM: 32.0GB
OS, APPs and Project files are on the single SSD hard drive in the computer and the cache is on a Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q 1TB USB 3.2 / Thunderbolt 3 External SSD using a thunderbolt connection.
Is this a sensible set-up or would keeping project files be on a separate SSD improve performance? All footage I’m using is created within an Adobe app or there are imported images occasionally but I am not dealing with video files.
The GPU is an Intel UHD graphics 630 which I now realize is not ideal for AE and indeed I have received messages from AE telling me that GPU is out of memory. Unfortunately it’s not possible to upgrade this.
In short, I’m struggling with the speed for previews, rendering is slow and it’s starting to prove a frustrating process as you can imagine.
Are there any other steps I could take that might improve performance or am I just falling down on the GPU. From what I’ve read all the other specs should I would have imagined given better performance that I’m getting but I’m far from having much expertise here. Perhaps there are some things I don’t know about that could help. I’m obviously aware of resolution adjustments, skipping frames etc in improving preview times.
I have read quite a bit now about having a workstation built and given that I’m committed to this project, biting the bullet and buying a workstation may be the only way to go. A decent workstation from my estimation looks like it would be in the region of $2000 which I’m not excited about but perhaps better than jeopardising my sanity waiting for previews.
Any opinions, information or pointing me in a general direction would be gratefully received.
Thanks!
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2 Replies
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After Effects is rarely as fast as you want it to be, and users can struggle with preview and render speeds even on high-spec systems. Depending on what you’re doing, it may not be realistic to expect fast previews. Some more insight into the work you’re doing could help us here.
Before you spend any more money on your computer, here are some tips on improving Ae performance:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/improve-performance.htmlThere’s also a great new feature in After Effects that helps you understand exactly what is adding to your render time — the Composition Profiler:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/composition-profiler.htmlThe information in these two links should help you make some more informed workflow decisions. Your final renders will still take some time, but hopefully this can get you working and iterating a bit faster with the system you have today.
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Thank you Walter!
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