Content-type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
MIME-version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 6.6 \(1510\))
Subject: Re: [AE] Sluggish performance with many nulls and lights
From: Jim Curtis <jpcurtis@me.com>
In-reply-to: <list-5305779@media-motion.tv>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 10:17:17 -0600
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
Message-id: <DD11AAC6-8468-4DCD-92BC-C785F2E76A71@me.com>
References: <list-5305779@media-motion.tv>
To: After Effects Mail List <AE-List@media-motion.tv>

I was having a similar experience yesterday on a relatively simple =
project.  Every click in the layer tab produced a 5-10 second beach =
ball.  Turns out it was a boot disk error.  I ran Disk Warrior, and it =
reported having a problem it couldn't fix.  So, I ran Drive Genius =
Rebuild, which allowed me to use Disk Warrior (booted in Safe Mode) to =
successfully repair the drive.  Now, Ae is working again with no beach =
balls.=20

Just a thought.  Might not be your issue.  Since you say deleting =
lights/nulls improves things that does seem to cast suspicion on the =
project or app.

You probably know this, but damaged Ae prefs can cause project =
misbehavior, too.  But, the spinning beach ball is usually OS related in =
my experience.

Another thing to check is the free space on your boot disk.  OSX can use =
lots of VM even when you have lots of physical RAM installed.  Too =
little space for VM can give you beach balls in all your apps, not just =
Ae.  I leave 100GB free at all times.


On Dec 3, 2013, at 5:17 AM, Chris Zwar <chris@chriszwar.com> wrote:

> Had a really slow tedious day today and am looking for suggestions.  =
After Effects (CS6) just gets really sluggish and unresponsive when =
working with big projects.  Sometimes it can sit there for minutes, =
doing nothing, except spinning the stupid beach ball every few seconds.
>=20
> For example - today I imported a maya scene.  30 seconds long, 1 =
camera and about 200 nulls.  The nulls are static, so only the camera =
has keyframes.  After Effects just sits there and stops, every mouse =
click prompting a beach ball that spins for a few seconds.  Simply =
opening the file, selecting a few nulls and complying them into a new =
composition took about 40 minutes - it should have taken a few seconds.
>=20
> Despite the tedium I tried several things to fix the dreadful =
performance and nothing worked.
>=20
> The obvious things like quitting and reopening, and then trying =
rebooting, did nothing.  Caps lock makes no difference - even though the =
scene is only nulls so there's nothing to preview anyway.  Turning the =
layer visibility on and off also made no difference.  I emptied all the =
caches in case it was a disk fragmentation issue.  Ram didn't seem to be =
a problem, with the activity monitor reporting I had 3 gig free.  I =
tried toggling the hardware acceleration on and off.  Even turning off =
the visibility of the nulls in the view options made no difference.  =
After Effects just sat there and beach balled constantly, even when I =
wasn't doing anything.
>=20
> I converted the nulls to lights using David's script and the problem =
was the same - worse even.
>=20
> This is very difficult to understand.  There is nothing to render - no =
layers except nulls.  All layers are turned off.  The nulls are static =
and don't have keyframes.  There are no hidden gotchas like motion blur, =
frame blending or depth of field.  No plugins.  Just 200 nulls and a =
camera and everything grinds to a halt.  Even turning off the visibility =
of the lights and nulls makes no difference - so even with nothing to =
display After Effects is just sitting there and beach balling, taking a =
minute to respond to each mouse click.
>=20
> If I delete most of the nulls / lights then performance will suddenly =
improve.  It's like there's a hidden threshold for the number of nulls =
and lights After Effects can handle, and once you go over it the =
performance falls off a cliff.  I have worked on compositions with =
almost 2000 layers - all with masks, effects and expressions applied, so =
I don't understand why a few nulls or some lights can practically break =
the application...
>=20
> Any insight?  Or even sympathy from those who've experienced similar =
things?  It's driving me insane=85
>=20
>=20
> -Chris
>=20
>=20
> +---End of message---+
> To unsubscribe send any message to <ae-list-off@media-motion.tv>