I thought AE was slow, but thought it was my machine.. so I tried to solve that.
I'm a power user of After Effects since it was in Beta with Cosa (That's 20 years ago.. whew). So I'm kind of an expert in this program..
Ever since CS6 I've noticed a strange bog down in the general operation of AE. Saving takes longer.. creating pre comps takes longer, and we won't go into ray tracing.. I've avoided that. I've just come to be even more patient with the software. However, when the new Mac Pro came out.. I thought, okay.. lets beef up this computer and finally bypass these endless slow downs..
So I beef up the new Mac Pro to the max.. that means a Ten Thousand Dollar machine.. loaded the software and opened my latest projects and the first thing I noticed is how it seemed to operate at the same exact speeds.. !!!!!!! Saving took long.. creating a pre comp with just one layer took way too long and the preview render did not show any noticeable difference in preview render speed. I would hope there would be some technical faster speeds, but this machine and my last have about 10 years difference sooooo.. I'm looking for a change to the naked eye.. Not milliseconds. Just as I had a 4 hour render on my previous machine so I offloaded that render to an even older machine and that machine took 9 hours!! So I know what speed differences look like.
it was at this moment that I finally realized that it must be the software because this new Mac Pro is a serious animal. I can see now, that the AE software needs a serious upgrade under the hood. We don't need more plug-ins like Ray tracing.. we just need the engine to be upgraded and optimized so as not to become it's own bottleneck.
I've avoided using Nuke for years.. even though I know Nodal based compositing is the future, but I held onto AE because I knew how to use it so well and fast.. sort of fast. Since I no longer have any connection with the developer and Adobe certainly has no interest in listening to me nor the inclination to find me or my concerns... I think It's finally time to move to Nuke. I only offer this message in the hopes that someone at Adobe might want to hear what I have to say or perhaps tell me the secrets to allowing the software to utilize the hardware better. but we all know there is no secrets. It either works or it doesn't.
So if you're looking for some power and speed in compositing.. I'm thinking Nuke because I've exhausted Adobe beyond it's limits and my patients. 20 years was a good run.