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  • AE CS6 speed and performance issues

    Posted by Scott Carter on June 27, 2012 at 9:39 pm

    Mac OSX 10.6.8 2×2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 32 GB 800 MHz DDR FB-DIMM. Recently upgraded from CS5 to CS6. AE is almost unusable. Takes a painful amount of time to update a comp and I keep getting error messages. The most common error message is: “After Effects Warning: A problem occurered when processing OpenGL commands.” After I get this error message the interface freezes up. Very frustrated and have a mountain of work to do. RayTracing turned off. Graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, could this be the issue? Any help greatly appreciated.

    Richard Dufty replied 12 years, 1 month ago 10 Members · 12 Replies
  • 12 Replies
  • Brian Charles

    June 27, 2012 at 10:49 pm

    You’ll note that the ability to activate/deactivate OpenGL isn’t in the CS6 preferences any longer. Nor is it in the Comp viewer settings.

    My understanding is that the new Fast Draft is OpenGL always on. You may need to adjust your Fast Preview Preferences and lower the Adaptive Resoulution limit.

    Brian Maffitt has a tutorial on the new performance settings here: https://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-after-effects-cs6/enhanced-performance/

    I’ve had such a positive experience so far with CS6 on my MacPro, though I have the 2010 model and a different video card.

  • Scott Carter

    June 27, 2012 at 11:40 pm

    Thank you for responding. I am thinking that it is a matter of my OS (snow leopard) or my graphics card. What graphics card would you recommend for my late 2008 model Mac Pro? I am currently using NVIDIA 8800 GT with 512 Mb. Do you think installing Lion would make a difference?

  • Brian Charles

    June 28, 2012 at 12:13 am

    I’m running 10.6.8 on my MacPro without any problems, I wonder whether your issue is with a driver or some AE preference.

    If you’re going to spring for a new video card, look at the nVidia cards with CUDA that are certified for CS6. You’ll see a dramatic improvement in performance for Ray Tracing and rendering. Limited selection for the Mac and not inexpensive.

    On Ebay you can find PC versions of the cards that are flashed for the Mac to work with the EFI boot. I have no experience with these at all but most reviewers seem to like them.

    https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6.html

  • Darby Edelen

    June 28, 2012 at 12:52 am

    I’d be surprised if this were the issue, but check under your setting for “Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels” in Preferences > Display.

    If it’s checked, try unchecking it.

    Darby Edelen

  • Sam Freeman

    June 28, 2012 at 10:22 am

    I had the same error the other day when activating motion blur for my RAM previews. I worked out that it didn’t like one of my layers – switched off that layers motion blur and it’s been fine since…

    Might help. Might not.

  • Scott Carter

    June 28, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    Thanks for your help. I will look into that. Quadro 4000 looks like it might be the one. I am on a Mac 3,1 and it looks to be compatible. Thanks again.

  • Joseph Bird

    September 21, 2012 at 3:50 am

    Sorry to dredge up an old post, but I just lost a couple hours of productivity in AE 6 because it kept giving me the open GL error. It finally occurred to me that motion blur might be the culprit. unchecked, and I’m back in business. I can’t replicate this error, and I’m using illustrator and photoshop files only.
    osx 10.7.5 8core 20 gigs of ram nvidia GTX 285 all drivers, AE Updates, and cuda updated.
    I’d love to use motion blur on this scene, I’d rather not resort to RSMB.

    has anyone found and solved this glitch?

    thanks

    BHD

  • Scott Macrae

    December 29, 2012 at 2:40 am

    Haven’t solved it, but do get it quite a lot with HD comps if I turn on motion blur, so at least on my macbook pro its entirely due to using motion blur. This is a huge shame, as 99% of my projects need motion blur applied.

    I have found a workaround that works most of the time. Go into your comp settings, navigate to the advanced tab, lower the samples per frams to around 12, and same with the adaptive sample limit. It doesn’t work all the time, but it has gotten me out of a couple tight spots.

    If anyone can crack this case, we are all ‘eyes’!

  • David Cabestany

    February 2, 2013 at 1:41 am

    I just run into the same problem, I’m almost sure it’s related (in this case) to Optical Flares. I have a scene with several OF which are following different sets of lights. Everything was working fine until I added an expression to animate the intensity of the lights sequentially, .4 seconds after the previous one. At that point the program crashed and when I restarted I got the “A problem occurred” message.

    I have good ram and a powerful video card, I don’t know what could be the problem, but I also got it a few days ago working with Element 3D.

  • Steven Miori

    March 20, 2013 at 7:58 pm

    having the same issues while working with Element 3D and motion blur.. so annoying it freezes up the whole project.. any ideas? I have a 32 Gb Mac Pro with good video card..

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