After Effects CS 4 Sluggish

[Doug Nash]

Sorry, I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but I was going to ask a similar question. I currently use CS3, which by all accounts seems stable and as fast any previous version I can remember. But I have heard from others that CS4 is buggy, and the speed is unreliable.

I was planning to make the jump to CS5, but I sure won’t if it has issues like what I’ve read about CS4. Can people please comment about any of this.

[Skylar Weeks]

What OS do you run? Also are you running a 32 or 64bit system? If you have a multi-core processor ensure that multiprocessing it enabled under the AE CS4 preferences.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Kevin –

The best advice I can give you is to go to this site:

https://generalspecialist.com/2007/02/troubleshooting-after-effects-7.asp

It’s not just for AE7. The advice there will enable you to think though all the possible shortcomings and settings of your system. I found that the “secret settings” for rendering, and the RAM advice were most useful to me. What jumps out at me immediately is the fact that you don’t have much RAM at all (at least for the quad core system you’re running – I think the common minimum is at least 2GB per core). Good luck – you’ll find the answer at the above link.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Kevin Sio] “I have a HP XW8600-dual quad core 3.00 GHz processor-4G RAM-1 TB internal esata drive-16 GB external RAID-graphics card is NVIDIA Quado FX 3700. “

With that amount of RAM, I would keep multiprocessing off. Turning multiprocessing on with 8 cores and only 4 GB of RAM practically guarantees RAM starvation and massive slowdowns.

The rule of thumb for RAM requirements with multiprocessing is is 2-4 GB per core (keeping in mind that the OS and any other open applications will also use RAM), and a 64-bit operating system. Your eight-core system would benefit from 16 to 32 GB of RAM.

[Kevin Sio] “I haven’t done too much work with it yet but I find it to be very sluggish, especially when changing size and position of a layer.”

You might try enabling OpenGL for interactions only — setting OpenGL to “Always on” is not recommended — and under no circumstances should you ever render with OpenGL.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Michael Szalapski]

Great tips from Walter there. I’ll add a few more tips:
Important Adobe blog entyr relating to what was said earlier about RAM usage: Performace Tip: Don’t Starve Your Machine

Great bit in this page on how to Improve AE performance

And I found a thread that also covers performance:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/976668

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Kevin Sio]

Many thanks to all responders. I’ve been “hijacked” myself by work! OS is XP SP3. 32 bit. When I get some free time I will dig into this more. Again, thanks

Kevin

Kevin Sio
Videographer/Editor
Corporate Affairs
National Grid