Can anyone tell me how I'm going to get the best performance out of AE - I have a number of circles I need to animate expanding which are essentially stroked lines. Just made some paths with very thick strokes and it seems to be chugging a bit. I'm wondering if I would be better off with a Solid, with a circular mask on it, if that's faster to render - more over, I'm looking for a document that explains how Shape layers are rendered vs Masks.
Is there any reading anywhere on performance for this kind of thing? Have any of you come across this?
Edit
I'm running a iMac, 27-inch, Mid 2011
Processor 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63b)