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eikonoklastes
Legend
September 28, 2022

Bug: UI is glitchy and slow on high DPI monitors

  • September 28, 2022
  • 40 replies
  • 3449 views
I'm on Windows, using a UHD 4K monitor and running 175% display scaling.

After Effects scales the UI correctly, but the performance of the Timeline panel especially is atrocious. Merely trying to scrub the timeline is very laggy. There are also visual glitches, like vertical black lines, and the playhead not redrawing correctly when using J & K to move between keyframes (the playhead gets disconnected from the line in a redraw glitch). Even doing a RAM preview on a fully cached timeline causes frame drops.

If I use the Windows high DPI settings dialog to override the scaling behavior (set scaling to be performed by System), all these performance and glitch issues go away. Scrubbing the timeline and resizing panels is smooth, and no visual glitches appear. Unfortunately, the entire UI is drawn in low res - pixellated and blurry, so it is not usable like this.

This has been a long-standing bug and I reported it over a year ago, thinking it was a graphics card issue, but it is clearly related to severe performance issues when doing high DPI scaling.

Here is the original post, which has screenshots and more details about the problems that occur:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2312838

    40 replies

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    Daniel5E13
    Participant
    September 28, 2022
    I'm having the same issues as well!

    I work on two 2k monitor's. I like to keep certain panels on a separate monitor for the sake of increasing my workflow, and I've noticed that this makes working in AE terribly slow, laggy, and sometimes nonresponsive.
    I've been dealing with this for a few years, but this version of AE has really been on another level of frustration for me.

    BUT, as soon as I have all my panels on one monitor, AE is back to being buttery smooth, quick, and responsive!
    Not sure whats going but this definitely needs to be addressed.

    It's definitely not my machine, I'm on a 3960x cpu, with 64gb RAM, and a 2070rtx GPU, and working on m.2 drives.

    FIX THIS ADOBE!
    J
    Jo5D38
    Participant
    September 28, 2022
    I have been talking with adobe support about this issue and it looks like they dont understand the problem (i think that they do) even one "senior support" for after effects took control of my pc and i gave him full space to do anything, i was watching the whole time, he spent one hour doing the same thing and asking me to see if the problem is solved, clearly it was not. So now i have a call appointment tomorrow.

    I will update.
    C
    chfilm
    Inspiring
    September 28, 2022
    This problem still persists. With each update I'm hoping for a fix but getting just more and more hopeless... These displays are not around just since yesterday. Is there ANY official statement on this from Adobe?

    The same problem persists in Premiere too (and lightroom classic, but at least there you have the option to switch to CC, which solves the issue!). In Premiere it's even worse because you are scrolling ALL THE TIME.
    sethcshort
    sethcshort
    Participating Frequently
    September 28, 2022
    FYI I found that the Windows system's display "Scale and Layout" is causing the issue for me. If I set (in Display settings) the Scale to 100%, After Effects works like butter. If it's at 125% (which I'm more comfortable with), all the glitches mentioned in this post appear. At 150% scaling, I'm still getting a little lag but not as nice as 100%.

    So, as long as you don't mind squinting 6 inches from your screen, problem solved?

    Also... if you set the Scale to 100%, open AE, and then change the scale without closing/reopening AE, the interaction stays very smooth... but the UI is blurry. It's definitely an issue with AE's scaling to various resolutions.

    Turning off the "Advanced scaling" > "Fix scaling for apps" doesn't work, FYI.
    SimeonVeld
    SimeonVeld
    Participating Frequently
    September 28, 2022
    I cant believe this is still not fixed... 4K is the norm nowdays and it is almost unusable on a 5000$ PC. unbelievable...
    F
    Francisco Ramon5E48
    Participant
    September 28, 2022
    Please fix asap. It's a mess of using the UI that laggy when in 4K nowadays.
      K
      kriscave
      Inspiring
      September 28, 2022
      Just got the Adobe suite set up on my new PC that has an i7, 32gb RAM, and a GTX 1070 Ti on my 4K Dell monitor, and good lord this is awful. The lagginess from the UI makes the app literally unusable to work in.

      It blows my mind that my 2015 Macbook Pro had no problem powering the same 4K monitor and After Effects without a GPU yet this mid-tier PC can't handle it because of Adobe's poor optimization. It's even more disappointing that after 12 years of Apple, I reluctantly yet excitedly made the switch to PC (I'm not a fan of Windows, but the cost to performance ratio is incredible). Now I have to deal with a goofy OS and I can't even use it to work.
      I
      Ignatz Johnson Higham
      Known Participant
      September 28, 2022
      Switched from a mac as I've been disappointed with apple for a while. Got a shiny new pc and 4k monitor. The lag is minor, but it's annoying enough that it slows down my workflow, a missed click here and there adds up as does the frustration. Adobe really needs to focus on fast and stable apps, lose the extra features. Yes its boring and it doesn't make people gasp at their events. But it would make the majority of their users so much happier.

      Though - I have found that switching to scaling of 150% and allowing windows to fix blury apps is the smoothest.
      C
      crispe123
      Known Participant
      September 28, 2022
      Same as above. I've had to get an old 12 year old 1080 monitor out of storage to use instead of my brand new beautiful 4K monitor. Such a bummer. I'm so unsatisfied with After Effects these days and just don't want to work in it at all.
      F
      forceWERK
      Participant
      September 28, 2022
      What I recently found out is that as soon as I have the display with the highest resolution set to "make this my main display" (Windows 10 settings: https://windowsreport.com/change-primary-monitor/), the interface is running considerably smoother (for AE terms).

      Not only in AE but also in Premiere, Figma, Miro etc.

      Even without the "High DPI scaling override" to system (recommended by eikonoklastes Jul 17, 2018 in the original post linked above)

      I'm running a Huawei MateBook X Pro 2018 (3000x2000px display) and two 4K external monitors on an Aorus Gaming Box RTX 2070.

      When I switch my main display back to my laptop screen, beforehand mentioned software works only smooth within this main screen, not anymore in the external screen.

      I switch it back to the screens with the highest resolution. Smooth again. On all 3 screens.
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