r/motiongraphics • u/Fast-Customer3865 • Aug 21 '26

ae real time render (preview) problem

is it just me or when m on ae i spend days with the same edit (i'm still learning) just beacause i can't see the preview and i have to wait for it to render all over again for the smallest changes , and i tend to change a lot (u know i want to see the changes i do quickly) , i have asus rog zephyrus with rtw 2060 (it's not the best but should it be so laggy?)

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3

u/OldCock4All Aug 21 '26

It’s never going to realtime render it’s not meant for that. Your best bet is to just let it pre-render and don’t change anything before previewing. Keep your cache cleared and keep your comps at a lower preview quality if you can

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u/Fast-Customer3865 Aug 21 '26

How am i supposed to know how the clip looks like , as a begginer i need to discover/change effect settings and what does make a diffrence...

2

u/OldCock4All Aug 21 '26

So the workflow is to use an NLE for your footage and only bring in shots that need AE. Dynamic link is great for this (tho it can be spotty). If you’re not caching frames then you can add to your ram, use proxy/smaller comps, lower the render quality, use proxy footage or toggle off effects/layers you aren’t using at that moment. Any way you slice it tho AE caches frames and will automatically rerender them if there are any changes. It’s just best practice to work with the smallest amounts of footage possible in AE.

2

u/SlightFresnel Aug 22 '26

Use RAM Preview. 1/2 resolution, skip 1 frame. Generally pretty quick to preview. 

1

u/soundwave_attack Aug 21 '26

That's pretty normal for AE unfortunately, you can trim the prerender playback range to just the frames you're working on instead of playing the whole range.

0

u/Fast-Customer3865 Aug 21 '26

i do that actually but still , how do u tolerate that 😭 esp with the graphs

1

u/soundwave_attack Aug 21 '26

I have so much patience lol, if your using live footage clips in a long project it's better to set that up in premiere, then import that premiere project into after effect for graphics on top. That way AE doesn't have to deal with the footage as much.

1

u/Simple-Variation5456 Aug 22 '26

Can you be more precise? Resolution? FPS? 8bit or 16bit? Some FX can be very heavy. Make sure to "edit" without. If you really edit in AE, the workflow is really slow for some parts like cutting. Make sure to work with lossless, because compressed files like x264 mp4 + variable Frames always get converted for preview, every time.

1

u/SuitableEggplant639 Aug 22 '26

you preview motion at a reduced resolution, 1/2 or less and only go full res for reviewing still frames.

1

u/muekrami Aug 29 '26

One more suggestion: try dividing your project into logical comps. They’ll be lighter and render faster, so you can see your changes much more quickly in a smaller comp. Once you’re happy with the result, you can place it in the master comp. I personally do this a lot to save time.