Interface is Slow and Laggy

@jenkmeister17177426 Thank you for responding to this thread! It is currently the "most upvoted" thread on this user forum under bugs! I'm not sure how features are chosen to be worked on but as a user, one would hope the most upvoted request would rank pretty highly on that list! I know its probably more fun to work on flashier product updates but this one has been grinding my gears for quite awhile now. 

As far as creating layer movement jank I can do it on a vanilla install of AE very quickly. It's not a quirk on related to other panels, I use only a very small number of script panels (motion V2, rift, and thats about it) 

I can send you this basic project file. The issue really crops up when you have more than a handful of layers in a composition. I would accept some lag if it was a very, very heavy composition, but we are talking about 80 solids that have no keyframes and take about 0-1ms to render.

Attached is a video of the problem. 

https://youtu.be/B2qIFfjGUB4

Edit : There are more upvoted requests under ideas but I swear this ranked very highly on user voice when that was still around. 

Thank You for addressing this problem honestly, I'm sorry to hear that you have a small team. That must be a challenge.

To me personally the problem occurs on a clean install of AE. No panels, no scripts, no plugins.

If I have to vote on anything related to features, it will be resolving this issue, even if it means a full stop on other innovations.

I mean, what's the point of color keyframes if they behave at 2fps. I'm sorry about the rant, but it's an animation software, dragging and releasing keyframes shouldn't be so slow. Sometimes it looks like I'm trying to guess where the keyframe lands... hold the mouse very steadily,,, and then release the button. Just to find it was missed by 1 frame. Rinse and repeat

.

". I'm not sure why you're being the voice of Adobe here. "

Yep, I agree. We're not talking about render, or previews, or user old hardware.. It 's an UI problem.

Again:

Ok, my last post is a bit too hopeful. The problem is still huge.  V22 is a bit faster than v.23. The problem is evident on selecting multiple keyframes and so on. But in v.23 it only took 1 layer 1 keyframe selected to lag like hell.

I watch a lot of tutorials, from JakeInMotion, ECAbram, SOM, all the goats have the same HUGE lag UI. So is not a user problem. We all have dealt with it since hi dpi monitors became mainstream (2014). The last drop of water for me was v23. It got worse. I'm sorry, i'm really not the "complaint guy". But this is bad.

I am already looking for other softwares. As soon as I have a more loose project I will use Calvary, or test LeftAngle Autograph.

At this lage stage of development for this product I think most users are tired of workarounds and gotchas! After Effects interface is less responsive than other other software, full stop. Just to name a few: Blender, Apple motion, don't exhibit these types of interface meltdowns at that AE often does when you start building a complicated project.  

I can literally recreate dropped interface frames and jank in about 30s in After Effects If I add more than maybe 3 keyframes  each to a layer stack of 30 solids. Maybe thats more complicated than the use case of some users who are just building the simplest titles, but for people who are doing minutes long animations its not uncommon to have 50+ layers in a comp with hundreds of keyframes and having AE regularly lag 2-4 seconds when trying to adjust timing is deeply aggrivating. The lag behind the mouse pointer when moving keyframes around is real.

Animation is all about timing and not being able to adjust this fundemental aspect reliably is a huge letdown. 

Its not a driver or computer issue. Obviosuly, if you are running a low end machine you are going to run into more issues, but even on extremely equipped workstations this is still happening. Every other piece of non-adobe animation software I use can manage to select 50 keframes without having a heart attack. Even Premiere's keyframes update way faster than AEs if you select and move those in the effects controls.  

https://twitter.com/TaylorJonpeters/status/1623778202241085440 

Example of lag!!!!

@Victoria Nece @jenkmeister17177426 Would love to see a response to this thread and if there is any hope of getting AEs interface back on track. I think I've seen mentioned before that the interface is one of the oldest parts of AE and would need a significant re-write but I think most users would benefit from some investment in this area. 

@marklowe 

BorisFX publishes some fantastic plugins.  If you participate in the BorisFX support forums, I'd look for responses from Mary Poplin, Mocha Product Specialist.  (Edit:  I just learned that Mary's now with Adobe as part of the FrameIO team - but still look for her responses when in the BorisFX forums.)

This performance tip from Mocha Product Manager Martin Brennand applies to not only Mocha and Silhouette but any After Effects plugin that has a custom user interface: Quick Tip: Faster Playback in After Effects 2022

@SebABF 

Yes, you should not have keyframes and layers stick to your mouse or have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to register that you have clicked, selected, or moved something.

When troubleshooting unexpected behaviors I've always found it helpful to compare a workstation that's not having the issue with the one that is.  For example, there was a Mac OS 8 fax extension that caused all source footage to show as 0-by-0 in After Effects 3.1.  Comparing startup items on a similar Mac that was showing source footage as expected allowed for quickly determining that the fax extension was the cause.  Of course, a lot of us don't have more than one workstation on hand and even if we do they're likely to be configured the same way.  That's why it is so helpful to follow the Adobe Support Community How-To Guide and provide the Adobe product and version number, operating system and version number, and computer hardware information.  In the case of After Effects, it's also worth listing any third-party add-ons as those are the most likely cause of sluggish performance with the user interface after the graphics driver.

@Warren Heaton10841144 

"'Use the numerous options After Effects provides to make it more responsive.'  Like what, exactly?"

• Composition Resolution
• Layer Quality
• Skip Frames
• Set Proxy
• Render Time Pane

Also, make sure you're using optimized source footage while working at a Project Color Depth that's appropriate for your output.  For example, use formats that decompress quickly at frame rates and frame sizes that are close to or a good match for your output frame rate and frame size and - very importnatly - don't work at 16 bits-per-channel or 32 bits-per-channel if your rendering or exporting content for YouTube.

Thanks for the tips. I shouldn't regularly, on simple comps (sometimes just containing some shape layers or text, have keyframes and layers stick to my mouse all day because the interface can't keep up with my mouse interaction, or have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to register that I've clicked, selected, or moved something, let alone just when I let go of the mouse button. I'm not sure why you're being the voice of Adobe here. Adobe developers should chirp up and listen and acknowledge their users, they are all fed up of the laggy interface, and they can't deny 104 messages in their forum.

Standard MacOS drivers. If I connect two 2560x1600 monitors back, everything runs normal (normal means that I feel Adobe UI is 10% slower then other app, but I can live with it). Another thing: if I run Silhouette standalone, it works fine. If I run it as a AE plugin, it is laggy as hell (AE is open in the background). So please, don't tell me it is not Adobe. I am not the only one here with similar problems.

@marklowe 

It sounds like your issue may not be specific to After Effects and Photoshop.

Which graphics card(s) do you have in the Mac Pro?  Are the graphics drivers included with macOS or do they need to be installed separately?  Installing an older version of AE and PS and/or the public betas along side the version that you are having an issue with, do the applications have the same unexpected behavior?  

If you connect an FHD display instead, is there any difference?  However, assuming this is a 2019 Mac Pro, it should support up to  one 6K display with the base configuration (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210228).

I do the bulk of my work on a 2019 Mac Pro and After Effects and Photoshop 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 all run really well under macOS 11.7 (although Photoshop displays a message that that's the lowest OS version for 2023 so I will have to upgrade to macOS 12 or 13 soon).