AE 23.1.0 Poor Performance. Timeline/Keyframe lag.

[Nick2049]

I recently updated to 23.1.0 and just thought that the awful performance was because my project was getting pretty heavy with a few hundred layers (which AE has always suffered from, because pre-comping everything is not the solution and we still don't have layer groups/folders..)

But.. I've just cleared my cache, created a new project and already I can see there is an issue, I don't even have any layers in this new comp and the timeline indicator lags behind my mouse pointer when I move it.

If I create a simple new layer (white solid) and set a couple of keyframes, when I drag one of the keyframes left or right it massively lags behind my pointer, and is very steppy.

Moving a layers position along the timeline or adjusting its start/end position is also the same, in fact it's so delayed that things get 'stuck' to my pointer and behave as though I have not released left mouse button, and thus end up where I dont want them.

I have cleared my cache, updated windows, tried the latest NVIDIA drivers (standard and studio), tried switching between CUDA and software.. all to no avail.

OS: Windows 10 Pro 22H2

BOARD: ASUS X299-E
CPU: i9-7940X
RAM: Corsair 64GB (4x16) DDR4

OS DISK: Samsung 970 PRO 1TB

SCRATCH DISK: Samsung 970 PRO 2TB

GPU: ASUS GTX 1080Ti (Driver: 528.02)

DISPLAYS: 2 x 27" 4K @ 150% Scaling

[JohnColombo]

We still have not yet been able to reproduce the issue in-house, but we're working with the data from this thread and other customer feedback to test different hardware and settings.

Even without a repro, our testing has shown that disabling Layer Controls (View > Show Layer Controls) helps with responsiveness. This is not a fix, but does disabling Layer Controls help at all for those of you experiencing this bug?

Thanks for any further info you can provide,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[JBrown321]

@JohnColombo thanks for the continued pursuit to resolve this. I did try disabeling layer controls and it may be just ever so slighly improved, but def still not smooth and still lvery laggy.  Hope this info helps a bit!

[Nick2049]

@JohnColombothanks for the update. Unfortunately this made absolutely zero difference for me.

[Frank23229779006k]

Experiencing the same issue. Not sure if this has been added to the discussion, but aside from similar specs posted here I also have Logitech keyboard and mouse.  Logi Craft keyboard and Logi MX Master 3 mouse, and Wacom Cintiq 16 inch.

Today's update does not seem to fix the issue for me.

Rest of the specs are as follows:

Windows 11 Pro

Gigabyte zZ390
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz
RAM 128 GB

Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti

Samsung 960 Pro 2TB

Samsung 960 Pro 1TB

Samsung 840 Pro 250GB

4k Dell Display

[asdf76284053]

Well, since someone from adobe's team actually gives a *insert family friendly word here*, ill post my specs.

Obviously issue is the same, after effects 22.X's timeline runs at 50+ fps, 23.X runs at 0.2fps - to sum it up.

Specs:

W11 22621.1194

X299 Asus Rampage VI Apex - up to date bios

10980XE

RTX 3080 Ti - tried old drivers, tried new drivers.

4X16GB 4000CL18

980 PRO 250G - where afx is installed

960 EVO 250G - afx's cache

4 4k monitors - after effects' UI is spread across 3 of them 150% scaling

Running it on 1 monitor doesn't fix it

Disabling layer hardware accel doesn't fix it

Running without mercury doesn't fix it

Disabling idle caching doesn't fix it

Running it in safe mode doesn't fix it

Reverting down to 516 nv driver doesn't fix it

What does fix it is running 22.X, literally any version that is not 23.X

I can have them run side by side, empty projects with one single composition and a single layer being dragged around.

If its of any use, I have a friend who has 23.2 on his macbook pro m1 and his pc (3900x and 1080 Ti). His windows machine

acts the same way as mine, as for the mac however - smooth as butter. Seems like MAC ain't affected by this at all.

[JohnColombo]

Thank you @JBrown321 and @Nick2049 for your feedback on disabling Layer Controls. Even knowing it doesn't fix the issue is helpful in our investigation.

Thanks as well for your system specs @Frank23229779006k and @asdf76284053. This issue does seem to be limited to Windows systems running NVidia GPUs, but our testing machines that match those specs are not reproducing the issue so far. 

Thanks again as we continue to investigate this issue,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[defaultowct0yvmuujv]

We have the same issues on all our powerful alienware 51 machines, RTX 2080Ti

[AdobLee]

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!?

[master_shake91]

I am having the EXACT same issue and nearly identical hardware.

Windows 11 (22H2) (Build 22621.1265)

Intel Core i9 12900K

Asus Pro Art Z690 Creator

NVIDIA RTX 3090 (Studio Driver 528.49)

128GB DDR5

Samsung NVME Drivers (OS, Cache)

External NVME USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (Media)

Even in a composition with maybe 4 or 5 layers, just scrubbing the timeline and twirling down to add keyframes on any parameters is killing production speed. I cannot understate how much slower it has become with the last couple of updates to After Effects. Render times are fine, but overall performance in After Effects has taken a pretty large hit. Hoping Adobe can investigate and push an update soon. 

I do not have antivirus software interfering or anything like those reported in other posts.

[Diego-3-1-20]

Not entirely convinced this is just GPU related. I did some testing since this has been affecting my work.

Having hardware accelerated panels on helps improve performance, but I can still see 4 cores doing a ton of work in taskmanager with it on or off.

Performance is affected by window size and workspace layout. At best, moving a single keyframe around maxes out at around 25 fps in a tiny window for me. Going to full screen gives me around 17-18. Scrubbing through the timeline maxes out at 75 on the same tiny window and drops to 50 if I go to fullscreen again. These numbers only get worse with more layers. Comp size didn't seem to matter. This was all with Cuda on. Switching to software drops performance a tiny bit more. Didn't notice a difference with hyperthreading on or off either. 4 out of 16 cores were always being taxed heavily when either moving a keyframe or scrubbing.

OS: Windows 11

MB: ASUS X570
CPU: 5950X
RAM: 64GB (4x16) DDR4 3600

OS DISK: Samsung 990 PRO 2TB

SCRATCH DISK: MSI M470 2TB

GPU: MSI RTX 4090 (Driver: 528.49 Game Ready Driver) also having issues with Studio Driver

DISPLAYS: 144hz - 34" 1440x3440 @ 100% Scaling

Little side note. If your mouse is also moving at a lower refresh rate randomly, disabling G Sync gets rid of that. Helps with accuracy since the mouse isnt moving around so slowly when dragging stuff around.

[ivan.markelov]

Hi Everyone,   I also wanted to add that most of my adobe 2023 apps run much slower then 2022 apps, including photoshop(Most noticable) lightroom classic, AE, Bridge. i have no spotted difference in the premiere but to be fair i ditched it years ago.  turning on and off GPu in any of those problems did not make the problem better or worse any more noticeable. I have both Mac and PC and it only occurs in WIndows.

PS. When I say slower I mean interface performance, fragging layers resizing, changing slider values in Lightroom etc. 

[nilsj65095933]

I have the same issues. Dragging keyframes is nearly impossible. It is so laggy that my dragged keyframes appear nearly radomly somewhere I let the mouse go. We are not using Nvidia Cards. We are running on Radeon Pro Duos.

[Nick2049]

Oh that's interesting @nilsj65095933 

Would you mind sharing the rest of your spec? I think this will maybe help Adobe move away from investing an NVIDIA issue.

I was actually about to drop a chunk of change on a 7950x / 4090 build but now it looks like I'd be better off just buying a Mac, or finally moving over to Nuke. It's very frustrating for those of us who are stuck using Windows (hard to switch because of other software requirements, i.e. 3ds Max ..sigh)

I do recall another employee on here once saying that Mac was the priority for Adobe and their app development, Windows is effectively a port.. is there any truth to this @JohnColombo 

[master_shake91]

I want to say I've been following this for a minute, and after doing a clean uninstall from the most recent Studio Drivers and a clean reinstall to the Game Ready Drivers, I see modest improvement. Still quite a bit of lag with higher layer count and highly keyframed compositions, but slightly better, in my opinion. With the addition of unchecking View > Show Layer Controls. This was mentioned as a potential fix by others in different posts. However, other members said they tried this without any discernable improvement, so your mileage may vary.

Looking forward to what the next update does in regard to these performance issues we're seeing. Thank you to the AE team for their awareness and communication on these issues!

[JohnColombo]

I do recall another employee on here once saying that Mac was the priority for Adobe and their app development, Windows is effectively a port.. is there any truth to this @JohnColombo 

By @Nick2049

No, this is incorrect. We develop natively for each platform and neither is a port of the other. If a feature is lacking on one platform or another, we continue working on it until it reaches parity. Historically, After Effects was originally developed on Mac in the early '90s, but moved to cross-platform components in the late '90s and later on moved to components that we share with many other Adobe apps (which are also cross-platform).

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[JohnColombo]

Hi all,

After the positive feedback we received from several of you using the latest Beta builds, we've released a patch (After Effects 23.2.1) that contains a fix for the Timeline lag in AE 23.1/23.2. Please install 23.2.1 and let us know if you aren't experiencing any improvement over 23.2.

We will continue to focus on improving the UI interactive performance beyond this fix, especially the known issue with increased lag when Layer Controls/overlays are enabled. With the latest fix, we aimed to restore the performance to where it was in 22.x so we can continue to improve on it in future versions of After Effects.

Thanks again for all the details and reports you provided,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[JBrown321]

Thank you @JohnColombo , will try the beta and get back to you! Just out of curiosity I am dying to know what your team discovered as a culprit? 

[JBrown321]

@JohnColombo  smooth as butter on the new beta!! What magic did you guys do? Oh man I'm so ready for this to come to the non beta version. 

[JohnColombo]

@JBrown321 Glad to hear it! We've already pushed a patch for 23.2 (23.2.1) to the Creative Cloud app, so this is already in non-Beta. 

Without getting too much into the weeds, the issue was simply that the UI was not updating enough/at a high enough frequency. Perhaps a bit anti-climactic, I know. The bigger issue for us was determining why we weren't seeing it and did not catch it in testing—we are remedying that as well.

Cheers,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[JBrown321]

@JohnColombo wow thank you so much for the persistence into this! I can't thank you all enough 🙂 

[JBrown321]

It's fixed everyone!!!! let's all raise our glasses to the adobe team!

[ivan.markelov]

@JohnColombo and everyone, i can confirm as well that 23.2.1 Runs as smooth as 22.6 now, but my mac still feels better, maybe its promotion effect

[asdf76284053]

@JohnColombo Whatever the team did seems to have solved the issue. Keep up the good work.

[Nick2049]

@JohnColombothanks for clearing that up, and to the team for rectifying the issue.

I wouldnt say it is completely resolved, it's still a little laggy, my Macbook Pro (which is from 2013 and far less powerful than my workstation) still outperforms it when dragging keyframes, but it's a huge improvement over what it was, the fact the keyframes are no longer 'sticky' is great.

Is there any reason why, even when there is no value change, the cache constantly rebuilds when you move a keyframe. For example create a solid, a single keyframe for opacity (but leave it at 100%) and drag it around, you'll see what I mean.

Maybe not the place to ask, but I'm going to 😄 ..Now that this has been rectified is there any chance you guys can work on what we've been begging for (for years) and that is folders for layers! Please save us from the endless scrolling!

[davids19273365]

I wish I could be celebrating along with everyone else but the patch didn't do it for me.  I am still experiencing the same key frame lag after installing the 23.2.1 update.  22.6 still works better for me, which is dissapointing.  I was really enjoying the new track matte work flow in the 2023 version.