AfterEffects freezes during RAM preview on new Mac Pro

[Daniel Kanemoto]

Update: After continuing to struggle with the issue today, I installed AE 2019 (version 16.1.3).

Happy to report that my project seems to run fine in AE 2019 (I can load the entire thing into RAM preview without any freezes), so I think I can narrow this down to an issue with AE 2020 itself, and not my new computer.

However my clients would prefer that I use AE2020 moving forward, so I’d still love to troubleshoot my existing issue with AE2020.

The crash log is super long (they always are), but I’m happy to provide it if there are folks on here who know how to read it or if that might be helpful.

[Matthew Woods]

What monitor do you have plugged into your Mac Pro, and how?

I was having no end of problems with RAM preview and After Effects. I discovered that After Effects RAM preview has issues if one of the connected displays is running at other than 60 Hz.

Go to “About this Mac” and choose “System Report”, then choose “Graphics/Displays” under the hardware menu. If any of the displays say they are running at less than 60 Hz, you need to fix it.

In my case I had a 4k Vizio television plugged in via HDMI, and unbeknownst to me it was running at 30 Hz. I had to get a different USBC to HDMI adapter, and use a program called SwitchResX to create a custom resolution to get it to play in 2k in 60Hz. The TV apparently doesn’t support 4k at 60Hz, even though it was advertised as a 4k 60Hz tv. It was one or the other.

After I got my display running at 60Hz it solved all sorts of RAM preview issues that I had been grinding my teeth over for months.

-Matt

Check out my plugins for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.

https://monadnock.org/plugins/

[Daniel Kanemoto]

Thanks so much for the response.

I have two LG UltraFine 5K displays (2019), both are connected via my GPU, which is an AMD Radeon Pro Vega II.

I can’t seem to find anything in the System Report that says the monitors are running less than 60 Hz — here’s what I get for both displays in System Report/Graphics/Displays:

Resolution: 5120 x 2880 (5K/UHD+ – Ultra High Definition Plus)
UI Looks like: 2560 x 1440
Framebuffer Depth: 30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010)
Display Serial Number: (redacted)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
Connection Type: DisplayPort

[Matthew Woods]

Hmmm… It might only show that informatation for things plugged in via HDMI. My iMac display and old Apple Thunderbolt Display don’t show it, and Apple makes it hard to find that info for some reason.

I can find more info for your display settings using SwitchResX, the program I mentioned before.
There is a free trial, so you can see if this is your issue:
https://www.madrau.com

You could also just try a lower resolution and see if they changes anything. According to LG’s website your monitor’s vertical refresh rate is “48~60Hz”. It might not support 60Hz at full resolution.

This is the thread that tipped me off to the 60Hz problem. Apparently it is a PC issue too.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects/ram-preview-not-in-real-time/m-p/10610087#M91919

Good luck,

-Matt

Check out my plugins for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.

https://monadnock.org/plugins/

[Daniel Kanemoto]

Thanks so much for the advice.

After doing some homework, I got confirmation that both of my LG UltraFine Displays are supported by my graphics card, the Radeon Pro Vega II, at 60Hz on my Mac Pro 7,1.

As recommended by Apple, I have the 1st display plugged into the Radeon Pro Vega II via Thunderbolt 3 into Bus 0, and the second display plugged in via Thunderbolt 3 into Bus 1.

Unfortunately, my AE2020 is still freezing up when I RAM preview complex sequences longer than 3 seconds, but the same sequences are fine when I run them on AE2019. Still haven’t found a way to troubleshoot this — I posted basically the same message on the Adobe AfterEffects forum, but haven’t had any replies. Super frustrating.

[Drew Hutchison]

Curious issue, I wonder if with the update that your Disk Cacheing settings have been reset. Might be that 2020 isn’t getting the same disk cache allocation as 2019 was? You can check these under After Effects > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache.

[Daniel Kanemoto]

Thanks for the question. Here are my current Media & Disk Cache settings:

Maximum Disk Cache Size: 1000 GB

My disk cache is set on an internal Sonnet M.2 4×4 PCIe card for SSDs. I have four 2TB SSDs on this card, they are merged together as a single 8TB drive using RAID 0. The drive currently has 4 TBs of space available.

One of the first things I did while attempting to troubleshoot the issue was clear the cache, and I’ve also tried to increase/decrease the disk cache size. It doesn’t seem to affect the RAM preview issue, though. I get about 3 seconds into the preview and then it freezes and when I try to quit the software, I get a spinning color wheel/full crash.

[Drew Hutchison]

Both versions of AE are being tested on the same machine correct? If so, it more or less sounds like a AE2020 issue like you said. Have you tried breaking down your comps to shorter/smaller less load intensive comps to see if the RAM preview will work on them? I wonder if it’s only your heavy load comps or just all comps in general.

In the memory section of your preferences, do you have the majority of RAM designated for AE2020 and that you aren’t reducing cache size when the system is low on memory?

[Daniel Kanemoto]

Yes, both versions of AE are being tested on the same machine.

Yesterday I noticed a ‘new’ issue with my RAM previews in AE2019 — for certain projects, I’m not getting ‘realtime’ playback speed with my RAM previews. My comps are 24FPS and AE2019 is only playing them back at about 8-10 FPS. (All of these projects, while large and complex, played back ‘fine’ in AE2017 on my old 5,1 Mac Pro, which had a total of 64GB of memory.)

This slow playback occurs even when I just have a single solid solo-ed, which makes no sense to me.

For both AE2019 and AE2020, I have my memory preferences set to:

Installed RAM: 384 GB

RAM reserved for other applications: 100 GB (I increased this from 25 based on a recommendation from a user on the Adobe After Effects forum, but it hasn’t made a difference in solving my RAM preview issues.)

Reduce cache size — I don’t have this checked off.

[Eric Santiago]

The issues you are having is similar to what we had last summer on a slew of Mac Pro 2013 (D700s and D500s).
Where one machine can knife through butter with some intense compositions and others would just freeze up period.
It was all due un-synced versions of After Effects.
Honestly, we stayed with 2018 on the D700s since it was crashing less…still crashing but less 😛

Can’t wait to upgrade to what you guys are enjoying 😉