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iMac rendering slow and computer temp is stone cold
Hey guys, trying to figure this out
I’m working on an 2011 iMac, 16gb RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048mb, 1tb HDD, that I’ve built a 500gb SSD into. It’s an old horse but for the simple animations I’m doing it has normally performed brilliantly.
I’m making simple drawings come to life in a glorified powerpoint presentation, 3D camera moves over a 2D surface. But as I’ve added more and more layers and esp feathering and fades, previewing has become insufferably slow. I know lots of feathering can be taxing, but the real concern is that while my iMac is working super slow rendering, it never rises in temperature nor does the fan ever speed up. He doesn’t seem to be trying very hard.
Both project, cache disk and all image files are on the SSD with plenty of elbow room.
13 out of 16gb RAM is allocated for AE.
What might be the issue? Can I make this badboy work harder?
I haven’t been using this computer for awhile (more than a year) and this project my first with the most recent update(AE 17.5). Has something new been introduced than may have affected my rendering? Thanks alot
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5 Replies
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I’m still on High Sierra 10.13.6. Should that affect things? Concerned that updating would only mess me up and slow the mac down further.
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Hi,
from what I have understood you are moving a 3D camera over a “3D layer” (3d cameras don’t affect 2d layers). That 3d space of your composition can be rendered with “Classic 3D” or “CINEMA 4D”. The second one is much heavier and slower. Go to your Composition Settings – 3d Render and check it is set to “Classic 3d”. This could solve your problem.
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Thanks Daniele,
You’re right, they are 3D layers. But I have checked that already, been working in classic 3D the whole time, so thats not the issue.
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well… I tried, it happened to me to be the default 3d render after an update.
If you have already made a similar project and you are experiencing now low performances after the update you can always try to downgrade to the previews version.
I am on the latest version of AE, but I am on windows and I have not experienced differences in performances with the 3d layers.
Your settings of AE seem correct… I don’t see why it should perform right.
You can check in video rendering and effects in project settings if switching between Open CL or METAL can help.
…and use 8bit per channel you you don’t need 16or32…
I hope it helps.
🙂
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As a test, you can install the CC 2019 version of After Effects alongside the current release to compare if something changed in the new version.
It could just be that your expectation for how fast things should be is out of proportion. I don’t know how slow it actually is or what your experience level with AE is. “Super slow” could be minutes per frame or it could be 10 frames per second depending on your expectations.
AE’s renderer isn’t as multithreaded as it could/should be (yet), so it could just be bottlenecked somewhere. Have you tried changing whether there’s a speed difference rendering software only vs. Metal vs. Open CL?
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