Improve performance

Explore ways to optimize Adobe After Effects performance by adjusting system resources, cache settings, and composition workflows to reduce render times and improve preview responsiveness.

You can improve performance by optimizing your computer system, After Effects, your project, and your workflow. Some of the suggestions here improve performance not by increasing rendering speed but by decreasing time that other operations require, such as opening a project.

• Make sure that you’ve installed the current version of After Effects, including any available updates. To check for and install updates, select Help > Updates.
• Make sure that you’ve installed the latest versions of drivers and plug-ins, especially video card drivers. To download driver and plugin updates, go to the provider’s website.
• Ensure your system has sufficient RAM for optimal performance, and at least 2 GB per processor core is recommended. Refer to your operating system or hardware documentation for instructions on checking and upgrading RAM.
• Close unnecessary applications. Running other apps without allocating sufficient memory can force the system to swap RAM to disk, significantly reducing performance.
• Stop or pause resource-intensive operations in other applications, such as video previews in Adobe Bridge.

• Keep source footage on a fast local disk for best performance. Using slow drives or network storage can degrade performance, so use separate fast local drives for source footage and rendered output when possible.
• Using a separate fast disk or disk array for the disk cache is ideal, and SSDs are well-suited due to their speed.

Improve performance by optimizing memory cache settings

• Allocate adequate memory for other applications.
• Enable caching frames to disk for previews by selecting After Effects > Settings > Disk > Enable Disk Cache. In After Effects, assign as much space as possible to the Maximum Disk Cache Size (on a separate fast drive) for best performance.

Improve performance by simplifying your project

Simplify and divide your project to avoid processing unused elements and to control when tasks are performed, thereby significantly improving performance and preventing unnecessary repetition.

• Remove unused elements from your project. 
• Divide complex projects into simpler ones, then recombine them before rendering the finished movie. To recombine projects, import all of the projects into a single project. 
• Before rendering, use the Collect Files command to put all your source footage files on a fast, local disk. Preferably not the one that you’re rendering and exporting to. 
• Pre-render nested compositions and render a completed composition as a movie so that After Effects doesn’t rerender the composition every time it is displayed.
• Substitute a low-resolution or still-image proxy for a source item when not working directly with that item.
• Lower the resolution for the composition. 
• Isolate the layer you’re working on by using the Solo switch.

Improve performance by modifying screen output

You can improve performance without changing project data by limiting what After Effects draws on screen. Since updating on-screen information uses memory and processing power, display only what you need and adjust visibility as your workflow changes.

• Turn off display color management and output simulation when not needed. The speed and quality of color management for previews are controlled by the Viewer Quality preferences. 
• Enable hardware-accelerated previews, which use the GPU to help draw previews to the screen. Select Edit > Preferences > Appearance (Windows) or After Effects > Settings > Appearance (macOS), and select Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels.
• Close unneeded panels. After Effects must use memory and processor resources to update open panels, which may slow down the work that you are doing in another panel.
• Create a region of interest. If you are working on a small part of your composition, limit which portion of the composition is rendered to the screen during previews. 
• Deselect Show Cache Indicators in the Timeline panel menu to prevent After Effects from displaying green and blue bars in the time ruler to indicate cached frames.
• Deselect the Show Rendering Progress In Info Panel And Flowchart option from the Appearance preferences to prevent the details of each render operation per frame from being displayed on the screen. 
• Hide Current Render Details in the Render Queue panel by clicking the triangle beside Current Render. 
• Press Caps Lock to pause updates in the Footage, Layer, and Composition panels. A red bar indicates paused updates, while panel controls still update as you adjust them. Press Caps Lock again to resume full updates.

• Select Draft 3D in the Timeline panel menu, which disables all lights and shadows that fall on 3D layers. It also disables the depth-of-field blur for a camera.
• Use fast draft mode while laying out and previewing a ray-traced 3D composition by selecting an option other than Off from the Fast Previews button.
• Turn off Live Update in the Timeline panel menu to stop After Effects from dynamically updating compositions. Learn more about Preview modes and Fast Previews preferences.
• Show audio waveforms in the Timeline panel only when you actually need them. 
• Disable pixel aspect ratio correction by clicking the Toggle Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction button at the bottom of a Composition, Layer, or Footage panel. The speed and quality of pixel aspect ratio correction and other scaling for previews are controlled by the Viewer Quality preferences. 
• Deselect Mirror On Computer Monitor when previewing video on an external monitor. 
• Hide layer controls, such as masks, 3D reference axes, and layer handles.
• Lower the magnification for a composition. When After Effects displays the Composition, Layer, and Footage panels at magnifications greater than 100%, the screen redraw speed decreases. 
• Set the Resolution/Down Sample Factor value of the composition to Auto in the Composition panel, which prevents the unnecessary rendering of rows or columns of pixels that aren’t drawn to the screen at low zoom levels.

Improve performance when using effects

Some effects, such as blurs and distortions, require large amounts of memory and processor resources. By being selective about when and how you apply these effects, you can greatly improve overall performance.

• Apply memory-intensive and processor-intensive effects later. Animate your layers and do other work that requires real-time previews before you apply memory-intensive or processor-intensive effects, such as glows and blurs, which may slow previews to less than real time.
• Temporarily turn off effects to increase the speed of previews. 
• Limit the number of particles generated by particle effects. 
• Rather than apply the same effect with the same settings to multiple layers, apply the effect to an adjustment layer. When an effect is applied to an adjustment layer, it is processed once on the composite of all layers beneath it.