M1 and After Effects / Ram preview problem

[waltteriii]

Hi,

I just got Mac Mini M1 with 16GB/1TB. Could somebody with After Effects confirm that you can play basic 3840x2160 resolution timeline correctly with one layer? Even when having no effects and placing 4k 1min video to the timeline ram preview is totally freezing and stuttering even the most lowest preview settings. Same goes h264 or prores video codecs. I didn't expect much from AE but wished I could at least somehow check what I'm doing. I did restore my old Macbook Pro's time machine backup (big sur) to this new Mac Mini and got feeling that something isn't right there. After effects shows the GPU informations as "AMD Compatibility Mode". This could be like old settings from intel machine (Macbook Pro 15" 2019). Anyone having same kind of behavior with Mac Mini? Otherwise the M1 is super fast with everything else than After Effects..

Thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

I cannot speak to whether the performance is to be expected and have no M1, but I can tell you about the AMD Compatability Mode.

It's a little similar to how it will report as VirtualApple if running under Rosetta. AMD Compatibility Mode means that the software is not updated to be M1 aware, and is expecting an immediate mode renderer. The M1's GPU is a Tile-Based Deferred Renderer.
To make sure no graphical glitching happens as a result of this, Apple forces some less efficient behaviour on software like this until it is updated to make the M1's GPU behave more like an immediate mode renderer, like the AMD or Intel GPUs.

At least I would guess that's what the name refers to based on this behaviour being present (see WWDC's talk on getting Metal apps ready for M1 for more details)

 

[waltteriii]

Thanks a lot @casperes1996 for the insight how things work under the hood.

Photoshop 2020 seems to recognise apple m1 as GPU. And Premiere is also fast, it runs perfectly smooth 4K timeline with effects and layers. I was hoping to have Mac Mini as silent render machine for AE but not be able to even playback ram preview really bothers me.

Photoshop settings showing Apple M1:

 

[Mr Screech]

Applied an animated background (curtains) to a 4k comp.
After the first initial render it played choppy the first time, 2nd time it was fluent at 30fps.

 

[BP75]

I had a big problem with previewing on M1 and I am not even working with 4K footage. I was working on a simple project which was a 30s 1080p Retail TVC, with assets from photoshop and illustrator, super simple animation, no plug-is used. I have animated it all using an previous MOV file as an audio reference. It was running smoothly. However, when I imported the final WAV files the preview went completely out of synch. I tried to purge, restart and I even tried to import the audio files as m4v and it did not fix the problem. So I had to move to other computer to be able to synchronise audio and video in after effects using the M1. Anyone experienced this? Any tips, workarounds or fixes?

 

[andrewcrist]

I found that if I'm having problems ram previewing footage, especially if it has an alpha channel, interpreting footage and making sure 'preserve RGB' mode is turned ON massively helps. Obviously there are some colour correcting things that need ironing out.