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How to Speed Up After Effects (and scripts)
This might be a general question, but if it’s been asked, I couldn’t find the relevant posts.
I upgraded almost every part of my computer last year and After Effects is much faster than it was before, which I love, but there’s still room for improvement and I don’t know which components help.
I was happy enough, but I just purchased the “Joysticks ‘N Sliders” script and that brought things to a screeching halt. Even when I hadn’t used it in a project, and I’d closed the panel, comps would render incredibly slow. I’ve had to disable it by taking it out of the ScriptsUI folder to get any work done. I also removed “Overlord” though didn’t notice much of a difference–do extensions slow down the program when not in use like scripts?
I’ve considered similarly disabling “RubberHose” when I don’t need it, but it’s too much a part of my workflow at this point.
What fixes this? I talk to computer people and they can only roughly guess about video software (and recommend only top-of-the-line upgrades). I talk to motion designers and if their computer is fast enough they’ve never questioned it. Do I need more RAM (I have 16gb, 12 allocated to AE)? I have an i7. My program files run from an m.2 solid state hard drive.Any help is appreciated,
Nick
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5 Replies
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Hey Nick,
knowing more of your setup would help. However, considering that you currently have only 16GB, I have a guess that the motherboard most likely won’t support anything more than 32GB. Which nowadays, is probably the smallest amount you should ever consider.
Anyways, please clarify what else do you have under the hood – full specs.
Lastly, when working with any expression-driven 3rd party scripts, try to set ‘Preview’ panel, to ‘Skip’ 5 frames when previewing. During intermediate steps of animation, you will be able to get a bigger picture without clogging your preview instantly. Thats a workaround for previewing in some cases.
Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting. -
Thanks for your response! I’ve attached my system specs below.
Frankly, I’m hoping RAM would help with my bottleneck, as apparently my motherboard can run up to 64gb and it’s inexpensive/easy to buy/install, relative to other changes. I upgraded piecemeal over the course of a few months and learned that some components have little to no relation, and since it’s so soon for a complete overhaul, I’d be happy to find I could improve my workflow with a couple of changes.
[Video card was the one thing that I didn’t upgrade recently and is the thing I know the least about, mostly because when researching, similar model numbers will vary wildly in price and I can’t tell if the memory listed online is the Total or VRAM.]How would I adjust preview settings like you suggested? I consider myself comfortable with After Effects, but I’m completely out of my depth on previewing options. At one point I was able to load a preview without it playing, but after an upgrade I can’t find that option anymore, let alone the 5 frame skip you suggested.
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Maybe other guys can say something more about the GPU – but I haven’t experienced major differences about it (in the end, you can inspect how much GPU load is during any GUI tasks – its close to none utilisation).
As for the Preview Panel – once you set ‘Skip’ value to (5), you should get such ‘Preview bar’ in the timeline, where greens are every 5th frame processed. Meaning, you can have better performance (of course, a bit of jerkyness will appear), but at least preview moves! This is helpful for extreme situations, to get things going.
In case you can’t see Preview panel, just reach in the top bar to ‘Window > Preview’ and select it. Preview panel will appear in the dock somewhere top right, most likely.
P.S. CPU you have is great.
Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting. -
Thank you!
My problem was not being able to find those options in the Preview Panel, but I eventually did (Unchecking “Stacked Panel Group”). Skip frames have been a huge help for my more intensive projects.
After looking into it some more, I also purchased some more RAM so that should help when it arrives. -
Going into Preview panel settings, un-checking “Previews Favor Active Camera” helped immensely.
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