BUG REPORT: User Interface is extremely sluggish

[richs14129608]

Issue:

I've been a power AE user for over 20 years and have never seen the interface this slow and unresponsive. Nearly every interaction takes 1-3 seconds to register, sometimes even longer. Zooming in and out of the timeline, slow. Moving keyframes, slow. Using any keyboard shortcut, slow. All slow regardless of project or layer complexity.  It's bascially unuable. Many, many others on here are complaing of the same issues. Please fix!

AE Version:

v23.0

OS:

Mac OS 13.0.1

Hardware:
Macbook Pro 16-inch, 2021
Apple M1 Max

64GB Ram
32-core GPU

Displays:

Built-in Liquid Retina XDR Display
Apple Pro Display XDR

Steps to reproduce:

Not sure what to say here as it happens nearly all the time. That said it does seem to get worse when working with UHD Prores 4444 footage. Before you say it's a project settings or resolution problem please know this unexpected behavior happens even when in capslock mode or in the lowest resolution preview mode possible. 

Expected result:
For the UI to be as responsive as every other piece of software running on this high performance computer.

Actual Result:
A large amount of lag. Sometimes you click a button and you aren't even sure if the click registered because the dialogue box doesn't pop up for 5 seconds after the fact. 

Please please please address or help us get to the bottom of it. 

[nubnubbud]

I've seen a lot of complaints for months about the m1 chips too, and call me clairvoyant, but I saw it coming- After effects was never actually updated to properly support multiple core computers, much less GPU's, and they spent a decade solving performance issues by throwing caches in RAM instead of on disk,
so of course when you have a piece of silicon with non-upgradeable RAM, space dedicated to a new kind of GPU, multiple kinds of densely laid out cores, and all of it uses new archetecture- it's gonna run poorly for a version or two, if it's even getting fixed.
you're running a program from 1993. After effects was never made to support ANY of your hardware. It has to be patched to take advantage of it, or it won't. It's just what happens.

I will say 64gb of RAM is on the lower side for 4k raw footage of that density. you can only expect a few seconds of playback at most. In most cases I would call that a workstation, but adobe products scale poorly enough that something of that power might not be enough. Apple likes to market its laptops as "super powerful", but they're still laptops- in line in most every way with mine (ryzen 7 8 core, with a 3060laptop card- the m1 is better at raster but worse at raytracing- pick your poison). if UHD is all, you might wanna try resolve for a moment if you NEED to get the footage out the door. the free version supports UHD I think.

also note that After Effects does just throw preview in RAM. this includes previews of different scale. if you preview a second at 50%, and a second at 100%, both previews will be in RAM separately. I highly suggest setting the purge all command to a hotkey and using it before you do any major previews.

[CREAM Motion]

I am on PC Ryzen 5950X and 128GB of Ram + SSD and I use AE 22 because AE 23 is slugish. Everything seems slower, moving keys, moving comps is sluggish... 

[nubnubbud]

welcome to the adobe ecosystem, your patronage is appreciated! too bad updates and functional code aren't. I've only done a pure rendering benchmark, but rendering is slower in my experience, too. In most ways I've already jumped ship. I'm still here 'cause I still use some functions of CS6 from time to time, and test it against the newer version. AE22 is about 20% slower than CS6 when it has all optimizations turned on- in rendering alone, so I feel your pain.

[AnimeRT]

I experienced the same lag. I found that it was my extensions panels being open. I was running Motion 4, AtomX, and BodyMovin' and with them running it brought my Ae to a laggy messy crawl.

[CREAM Motion]

Interesting, I use Motion 4, Duik and Animation Composer 3.
Will test that on AE 23.

[JohnColombo]

Hi @richs14129608,

Thank you for making this report. This is a longer thread about the UI sluggishness here, but I'll be keeping this thread separate since we aren't able to thread replies in Bug threads and I'd like to keep the conversation focused on your specific issue.

What you're describing is not what I've experienced personally using After Effects across several M1 systems. I say this to be clear that what you're experiencing is not the expected performance, especially for an M1 Mac. 

As a starting point, what typefaces do you have installed? We have seen numerous reports of typefaces with large numbers of glyphs, like Apple SF Pro, causing extreme UI lag simply by being installed and even worse when they are used in a project. We fixed this once before for SF Pro, but a newer version of that typeface has reintroduced that issue. If you don't have that particular typeface installed, I would try using "Deactivate all fonts not in use" in the Creative Cloud app to see if that improves performance.

Secondarily, what third-party plug-ins and panels do you have installed? These have a tendency to introduce UI lag as well, especially plug-ins/panels that "poll" the project like Maxon SuperComp or Motion 4.

Thanks for reporting this issue and for any further information you can provide, 

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[AnimeRT]

Thank you for the response. To answer your questions;

I am aware of the SF Font family issues and have variant versions of those font that were community created (download here if you are curious https://github.com/tylerwolf35/AppleFonts). In fact, I am aware of the CC font issues and usually download fonts locally to avoid the CC font issues.

As for extensions, I am running Motion 4, Easy, AtomX, MotionDuck (AdamX variant), LottieFiles, and BodyMovin. I am 99% sure that it is the extensions that cause the sluggish issues. When all extensions are closed Ae sluggishness is almost none. But as each one is opened, in no particular order, the sluggishness gets worse and worse. You can also monitor the ram useage and watch Ae require more and more static ram as each extension is opened. Closing extension panels you can watch the ram use reduce.

I personally think the issue is the M1 Ultra and the way Ae funcitons. I have been running Mac and Ae since 2005 and it seems that upon each change in architechure the Adobe programs suffer for a while. Let me know if I can run any tests for you.

[JohnColombo]

Thanks for those details @AnimeRT! The extensions you've mentioned that are causing the lag are not Adobe products, so I would definitely let those developers know the kind of lag their products are causing. For better or worse, extensions are free to utilize whatever system resources they deem necessary. We expect them to be good citizens in that regard and keep the customer experience in mind.

- John, After Effects Engineering Team