I LITERALLY wasted HOURS trying to figure it out, including searching the forum.
problem... rendering out new loops with my DXV preset in after effects is creating bigger files and is not playing smoothly.
solution... when avenue came out, i installed it on my animation workstation. at the time, I had created an After Effects Render template before and called it DXV. to batch process media
a few months ago i uninstalled the demo of avenue from my workstation... not considering that the DXV codec would go with it.
so while i was grabbing the same exact AE render template.... all the files were impossibly sluggish.
after many hours of trying to figure out how avenue 3.1 was ruining everything, i checked the settings of my render template to see if i had to adjust them.
come to find out... with avenue gone, DXV was gone, with DXV gone, the DEFAULT codec that my template picked up was Animation codec.

so... jumped over and downloaded the standalone codec and chaos was restored to the universe... i did have to re make the ae template afterwards.
so...i'm a big dumb idiot... i am posting this in case it happens to someone else... but really it is more for the international laugh of the vj community... your welcome