RAM Preview not real time on MacBook Pro M1 Max
I'm currently having to use After Effects 2021 instead of 2022 because 2022 will not RAM preview in real time. I'm running a brand spankin' new 16" MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64GB Unified Memory & 4TB of space. The system is screaming fast so this AE issue is evidently a bug. Please fix as soon as possible Adobe because AE 2022 looks amazing and I'm dying to dive in.

Hi all,
Thank you all for your feedback on these playback performance issues. As you may have seen, the latest update to After Effects 2022 ( 22.3 ) brings native support for Apple silicon to the release version. While we are not considering this playback performance issue fixed yet, but we do need some clarity around the exact conditions that can cause the playback performance to degrade, given that it appears to have originally been reported against After Effects running under Rosetta. With that in mind, please do the following:
If you have been running into slow previews while using After Effects 22.2.1 or earlier on Apple silicon under Rosetta, please update to 22.3 and see if the playback issues persist when you run After Effects natively. Let us know with a comment whether you continue to see any playback issues when running After Effects natively or under Rosetta.
If you have been using the Beta version for Apple silicon support and are still seeing playback performance issues in the Beta, please use the "Provide feedback" button in the upper-right of the After Effects (Beta) interface to post the issue with your system details to our Beta forums. Ideally, please keep future feedback or bugs from the Beta version in the Beta forums rather than here on UserVoice.
While this issue appears to be easy for several of you to reproduce, there are many variables that can affect playback performance ( project settings, footage codec, display settings, etc ) and we have yet to find which one will allow our team to reproduce this same issue so that we can diagnose the cause and find a fix. Thank you all again for reporting this issue, and for your patience as we work to find a solution.
Thanks again,
- John, After Effects Engineering Team
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Matthew Woods commented
This is not a new issue, and not unique to the M1. The problem has been around since 2016. I have it on my 2017 iMac pro as well. See this thread:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/ram-preview-not-in-real-time/td-p/8353465.
The fact that After Effects will not playback cached frames in anything close to realtime is my number one issue with the program. I hoped you all would finally fix it when rewriting stuff for Apple Silicon. Apparently not.
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Alaric Holloway commented
I just obtained an M1 Ultra Mac Studio. Preview is not even marginally faster than my 2019 Intel Macbook Pro. I'm running After Effects 22.6.0 build 23 natively on M1, and After Effects 18.4.1 build 4 on Intel.
I will be uploading a simultaneous side-by-side recording of these devices to YouTube shortly and publishing to Reddit / Twitter / Apple / Adobe / and whatever other relevant channels come to mind.
Adobe has grossly misrepresented the performance gains of M1-native After Effects. The lack of transparency is disturbing, bordering on deceptive. When can we expect genuine, broad-reaching performance increases on M1 as opposed to cherry-picked numbers under artificially fabricated scenarios? Adobe has no answers.
UPDATE: Recording of side-by-side performance can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnn0DcosO4w
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Thomas Crosby commented
Brand new m1 max mac studio. After Effects has been seriously disappointing. Both in performance and rendering times.
I dont understand how this machine is somehow slower then my six year old macbook.
Disappointed.
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Sarah Low commented
Echoing the issue many are experiencing here. Brand new M1 MacBook Pro running 22.4 on Monterey 12.4. Making changes to a credit scroll I'm working on -- text only, zero effects and plug-ins used, takes longer to preview than it did on my old Windows machine. Completely unacceptable; even changing text from bold to italic gives me the beachball and even then takes about a minute and a half to show up in my preview window.
A fix is long overdue.
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Aaron Asbury commented
Renders times are super fast on new M1, but previewing is taking longer and maxing out at around 15-20s. Even in 22.4. Hopefully this is fixed soon.
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Timm Völkner commented
Hey there,
I'm too experiencing incredibly slow workflow within AE 22.3 (Silicon) on 16inch M1 Max 64 GB, 1 TB Storage // OS Monterey 12.3.1.
After letting it ram preview it even is very slow with a green bar being displayed. But it's not only playback, a simple change of text size takes about 2-3 seconds to render on the program screen.Thanks in advance
Best
Timm -
Daniel, Gerdon, & Lars,
Are all of you of experiencing the poor playback when running After Effects natively or under Rosetta? For those of you who haven't tried yet, does the workaround described by David B ( matching the colorspace of your footage ) make any difference?Thanks for reporting this issue and for any further info,
- John, After Effects Engineering Team -
Thanks for that follow-up, David B. We have a bug on the slowdown under Rosetta with mismatches color profiles and our engineers are investigating.
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Lars Erik Lunden commented
Hi!
I have the same problem. Got the new MacBook Pro 16-inch Apple M1 Max 64gb
Before I had Mac Pro 2013 and had no issues ( only lack of Graphics card power).
Basically render preview is slow that I use my 3D rendering PC for doing basic work. I hate to switch between two computers. -
GERDON DESIGN GmbH commented
Same here on M1 Max.
Playback stutters (2fps) when running on rosetta. Even with files like 460x320p.
Switching to M1 fixes the stuttering but is not an option because of the lack of plugin support (Video Copilot).EDIT: I tried Davids fix with turning color management off in the project settings. This resolves the playback issue for now.
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David Bengali commented
Hi John,
David B here, just letting you know I have installed AE release version 22.3 on M1 Max 16" macbook pro with Monterey 12.3.1
When I run After Effects 22.3 under rosetta, I am seeing the same issues with mismatched color space causing slow previews. We do need to use after effects under Rosetta because many important plugins are not yet supported on M1, and we have projects that we would not be able to edit without opening in Rosetta.
Steps to reproduce:
Mark AE 22.3 in the info window to open using rosetta
Create new project
Turn on project color management and set working space of project to srgb IEC61966-2.1
Import an h.264 (avc1) .mp4 file - it is automatically interpreted as Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 as shown in the info area at the top of the project window
Drag footage onto new comp button to create new comp matching the footage
Press spacebar or preview button. Preview speed is very slow
Steps to resolve:
Turn off color management for the project. Purge cache to ensure cached frames are not being used. The preview speed still returns to normal
OR
set the project working space to Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 (matches footage) Purge cache to ensure cached frames are not being used. The preview speed still returns to normal.
OR
turn off color management for the footage item (preserve RGB under interpret footage). Preview speed returns to normal.
I am happy to send a sample project and footage file where this behavior is still seen under Rosetta with AE 22.3 if that helps.
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Daniel Keller commented
I also wanted to give one point, I am running 22.3 and the Preview Rendering for me is insanely slow, but as soon as I change the composition length the next few renders are all instant. Then its starts slowing down again until I change Composition Length again and than its instant fast again.
Rendering the final video is insanely fast, its just the preview that's so slow
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kaspar kilchenmann commented
Same here - MacBook Pro 16inch, M1Max, 64GB
Preview renders are disappointingly slow
even simple QuicktimeFootage with no additional effects or anything is very slow plays very slow - defenitely slower than my old MacPro from around 2013/14
I really was looking forward to a big improvement in terms of speed with this new Mac
hope AE-version which runs natively on the M1 chips will come soon (since I assume that is mainly the problem - some people mentioned the AE-Beta, which should run natively on the M1's is quite smooth) -
Dariusz Rzontkowski commented
Same situation 16" MacBookPro, M1 Pro, 32G most recent AE Beta version. Imported a simple image sequence from blender. 0 effects just playing it back is horribly slow.
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Emmanuel Gettliffe commented
Same here.
Brand new 16" Pro, M1 MAX, 32G.
Basically, unusable, and it comforts me in my opinion that Adobe absolutely doesn't care about it's customers, as long as we depend on their software, they'll keep not giving a damn about their products barely functioning. -
Ben Martin commented
AE performance on my M1 Max 16" is painfully slow. Basically unusable. FIX THIS ISSUE PLEASE.
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JaseH commented
Good to see others having this issue. MP4 and Mov imports do not play or are extremely sluggish, even after the ram preview green bar ostensibly indicates the full timeline is ready to be preivewed. So far I experience is more with mp4s than movs. But both are having this issue even when it is only footage in the timeline with no effects or additional layers.
This occurs both on 22.2.1 and Beta 22
on M1 Max 64 GB.Also in Beta, even if the footage is playing back normally (again—footage only, no effects or additional layers) scrubbing across the timeline halts and freezes.
EDIT: Indeed, after seeing David's comment regarding color space, adjusting the colorspace of the project to match the the footage did help on this specific project.
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Teague Hayes commented
Just to be clear from the initial post. I can open up a project in AE 2021 and it runs great, if I open that exact same project in AE 2022 the RAM preview is sluggish to the point I can't use the software.
John, I'll try the Beta version and let you know if the preview works.
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Diego Fernández commented
Same problem. Painful slow preview and render on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 2022. Unbelievable.
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Danny Burns commented
So, I came here looking for an answer to this exact problem, and it seems that the steps listed to correct the issue do NOT actually work, at least in my case.
I have followed all suggested setting work-arounds with regards to color space matching or turning off color management entirely, and nothing works. The choppy RAM preview persists. This is beyond frustrating, but almost not surprising anymore. Now forced to look into alternatives.