After Effects is ridiculously slow.

[jeremyt1769380]

Hello community,

Does anybody know where I can purchase one million gigs of ram at a reasonable price? I am hoping that this will increase the performance of After Effects, so that I can properly use the software.

Thank you!

[P.M.B · Accepted solution]

Trust me when I tell you that it would not help.

[jeremyt1769380]

On a more serious note...

Would you happen to be able to recommend a good graphics card, at an affordable price? I need something that can handle After Effects, and Premiere Pro. I also use my computer to DJ, and I will need to mix video onto large screens. I would like 4K capabilities, and multiple screens. Any suggestions?

[P.M.B]

From what I've seen I think the nvidia 1080s are probably the best overall bang for your buck but I can't speak intelligently about how they work with AE or Premier or about streaming 4k to multiple screens.  You might need more than one card for that but I'm not really sure.  I use a strix 970 and I'm very happy with it & its 3.5gigs of RAM

[jeremyt1769380]

Thank you for replying! After about 24 hours of research, I'm about to order the EVGA 1070 Founders Edition. It should be a huge improvement from my stock graphics on my I-7 processor, and it seems to be reasonably priced.

Have a great day!

Adobe - sorry for talking bad. I love your team and your products, even though they frustrate me at times

[Szalam]

Please don't expect too much difference in AE with a new graphics card. Unless you are using the (obsolete) ray-traced renderer which is very reliant on the GPU, AE doesn't use the GPU for as much as you might think.

Now, things are beginning to change with the most recent versions of AE. With the update a couple of weeks ago, AE now natively accelerates the following effects with the GPU:

• Fractal Noise
• Gaussian Blur
• Fast Box Blur
• Lumetri Color
• Sharpen
• Brightness and Contrast
• Find Edges
• Glow
• Hue/Saturation
• Invert
• Tint

But that's it. Now, it can make a huge difference if you are using those effects heavily. I have a project using mostly Fractal Noise and it is rendering WAY faster in AE version 14.2 vs. the previous versions.

Also, some third-party plugins are greatly accelerated by the GPU or render entirely on the GPU. So, things like Red Giant Universe, Element 3d, Magic Bullet Suite, BAO Boa, ShapeShifter, Zaxwerks 3d Invigorator, etc. will depend very much on the GPU.

[jeremyt1769380]

Thank you for the info! Do you know if additional RAM would be helpful for previewing and rendering times? I've seen many people say that 64 gigs is a good place to start for AE. I currently have 16 gigs though, and my RAM is never maxed out. I haven't seen my usage go above 85%... So I don't see why more RAM would help. I thought I would ask though...

[Szalam]

Seeing as you really should dedicate approximately a quarter of your RAM to "other applications" in your preferences, I would say that if your RAM usage is hitting as high as 85%, you might consider upgrading it a bit. I don't think it will make a huge difference on speed, but it would definitely allow you to have longer preview sections. (And it might be faster...couldn't hurt to try!)

I should say, bumping up to a dedicated GPU from nothing is going to make a big difference if you want to use Red Giant Universe, Element 3d, or any of the other GPU-based effects I mentioned in my previous post. For example, you can actually use Element!

[jeremyt1769380]

I'm planning to get Element 3D in the future. Thanks for your help!

[P.M.B]

I would say that 16gigs of RAM is good starting place but the more RAM the better.  Rendering is mostly CPU.   GPU is is still, at least for the time being, the least critical hardware component of the 4 big ones:  CPU, RAM , SSDs & GPU.

The reason I suggested the newer nVidia series card was only because you mention something about being a dj and "mixing to multiple 4k monitors".  For that you will need beasty cards. Probably more than one.  Just for using using AE & Premier & rendering to final videos it's not that important.  It was only within the last year that retired my 560ti and went for a 970 which is more than enough for what I do.   But if I were planning on streaming video live to multiple 4k monitors I would be researching a setup with multiple 1080s or multiple Titans....for live streaming video to multiple, large, 4k monitors in a DJing environment.

[jeremyt1769380]

Understood. I have an Intel Skylake 6700K. My other components are as follows...

Samsung SM951 M.2 256 GB SSD

Asrock Fatality Z170 motherboard

16 GB DDR4 3200 RAM

Two 1 TB Toshiba hard drive's

EVGA G-Force GTC 1070 graphics card

Do you see any room for improvement anywhere, to make AE previews and rendering fast? Or is it just this way for everyone?

Thanks for all of your advice. I really appreciate it!

[Szalam]

Without seeing how it's behaving for you, it's hard to say if it's "that way for everyone", but After Effects works very differently from video editing programs like Premiere Pro and often people have expectations of how it's going to behave that are a bit too optimistic about speed. So, it's possible it's just slower than you expect or it's possible there are things you could do to make it go faster; we don't know enough to answer.

As far as hardware goes, it can help to have a large and very fast SSD dedicated to AE's cache (separate from OS/software and separate from footage/assets).