Interface is Slow and Laggy

FYI, the first fix, to restore the performance on Windows from 23.0, is now in beta, starting with build 36. We are working on getting a 23.2.1 shipped in the next few days for all users that will contain that fix. 

Can't overstate how huge of a day-to-day impact a smooth interface would be to this program. More often than not these days I feel like my work gets done despite the state of the software instead of because of it. 

To quote the OP:

"It's been YEARS. I kept thinking, "ah, they'll fix it soon.." and hope for the best and I end up feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football every time a new update for After Effects comes out. "Maybe they fixed it!" And it's still not fixed."

I too, have been in a state of limbo of not wanting to ditch AE, thinking surely Adobe will fix this important industry tool. There still isnt a true viable competitor I am aware of that really nails the 2D mo-graph and compositing niche, but that shouldn't be why I am paying for this software. Autograph looks promising but their pricing is pretty out of line. 

Crossing my fingers that this finally floats to the top of priorities and not some AI-Whiz-Bang tool that might sell some seats, but won't fundementally change these longstanding codebase probelms. 

Thanks again for responding to this long-unaswered thread. As they say, the frist step is acknowledging that there is a problem ;-). 

@jenkmeister17177426I understand completely and really appreciate the transparency.  It calms me to know that someone in Development is at least aware of the older lag issue and plans to remedy it -at some point-.  I can’t begin to describe how my heart sank when the impression I got from recent posts was “we (Adobe) haven’t been aware of/working on this issue you chatted with Support about and reported back in 2020.”

No, I can't commit to 23.2.1 fixing the long-standing issues. We'd like to get 23.2.1 out in the next week if we can. Right now the focus is getting things back to the perf they were in 23.0. The layer controls slowdown is in investigation but is looking like it'll need more time to be coded and fixed on the Windows side so that might be a few months. Other slowdowns beyond that are things we are looking at with a larger UI update taking place likely this year. I know that probably doesn't sound great or helpful, but trying to be transparent about where we are at and what we are working on, at least the best I can. 

@jenkmeister17177426 I appreciate the effort, especially since this original (migrated) post is from 2020.  (SpaceX has astronauts?!  What’s next?)

That said, I hope that the 23.2.1 update fixes what I (and I’m assuming many others) have been experiencing for years (I can recall this issue rearing its head as early as late 2018, 2019..) and not just whatever lag users are now experiencing because of something that broke under the hood limited to between 23.0 and 23.1.

Thank you,

Marc

A quick Saturday update for folks on this most recent issue. We were able to finally get a repro internally and understand the change that is causing the issue. We are working on a fix over the weekend and looking at pushing out a 23.2.1 update asap with this fix plus a couple of other unrelated issues. We are also still working on the layer overlay being slow (primarily on Windows) and hope to have a fix for that in the future. 

@Scott.C. 100% agree. We are going to fix the overlay performance issue but we know there is more there to fix, which we are trying to do asap to get things back to a useable state. As to a UI rewrite, hard for me to share too much of our plans, but we know this needs to be a priority so you can infer we are looking at it seriously. 

@jenkmeister17177426 A step in the right direction! I still take the aspirational view that dragging keyframes and layers should be something that can render at 60fps regardless of how big the layer stack panel is or how many layers etc (to a reasonable limit I suppose) . As noted I know this is an old part of the code, and I feel like that goal might require a total re-write, or maybe it just needs to be further unbundled from the viewport render step... either way even with layer controls off its still not "buttery" if that makes sense. Hoping these types of issues help nudge the team towards dedicating some serious resources to bringing AEs interface into the current decade (or 2) in terms of performance! 

Same issue, since v23 update, pointer is sticky in the timeline, triming or moving layers have delay. Im on windows 10, Nvidia Studio drivers (because I am using Octane render I cant have game drivers) all up to date. Simply creating a new project and creating a solid produce the lag. It is unprofessional, unacceptable that such bif empire like Adobe do not fix those bugs. We are in 2023 I can't believe it, we should get a refund on our pricey subscription! How can we decently work for clients with this kind of unbelievable problems? DO you happen to test (or use) your software instead of updating every 3 days!?

The panel thing is interesting, we'll have to see if that repros for us internally. Not as a workaround, but to understand what is different. 🙂 

That aside, one thing we have figured out (thanks to @Scott.C. for his projects) is the drawing of the Layer Controls/Handles is significantly impacting timeline scrubbing and layer/keyframe movement. You can try for yourself by turning off Show Layer Controls from the View Menu. You should find moving the timeline and keyframes is much quicker. So that scenario in particular we are working on fixing right now and hopefully will have something into the beta soon. 

We do still think there is something else that's happened between 23.0 and 23.1 but are still looking for a project that can reproduce the issue (after the layer controls are turned off). If you have projects that fit that description, please let me know.