Bug: UI is glitchy and slow on high DPI monitors

[eikonoklastes]

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

[SimeonVeld]

I cant believe this is still not fixed... 4K is the norm nowdays and it is almost unusable on a 5000$ PC. unbelievable...

[sethcshort]

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.

[chfilm]

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.

[Jo5D38]

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.

[Daniel5E13]

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!

[yak007]

go to windows 10 power managerment then switch to High performance mode. After effects 17.1.1 feels ok to me

[Blasko0101]

I have the same problem here. I'm working on Asus 4k monitor MG28U and it's very laggy with After Effects.
Can someone tell me if this problem occurs on 2K monitor as well ? Because I'm planning to buy a new one.

High performance mode is not working as an option anymore

[anythingwilldo]

Same here, been having this issue for at least 2 years, maybe more. I had an HD monitor as my 2nd screen for years and it worked great up until then. My main monitor is an iMac Pro with a Retina 5K display.

If I expand the timeline panel to cover the whole screen and leave the comp panel on the 2nd monitor, scrubbing the timeline is impossible, the playback is all choppy and for lack of a better word, it stutters. As long as the timeline panel is on the bottom half of the screen, scrubbing works as expected.

I got a BenQ 4K monitor about a month ago and the problem became even worse. Now I have to actually go into the system preferences and lower the resolution of both screens to less than the default and only then the scrubbing works fine.

I reached out to Adobe about a year ago with this problem and they said they had no other reports of similar problems so they did not do anything, other than blaming my setup. Now, I'm with one tech support on chat checking what could be it, I'll report back after we're done, somehow I suspect it will not be fixed in this remote support session.

[GregPin]

Indeed, 2 years struggling with this issue (Dual 4K Dell).

Some suggestion for very slight performance improvements (like suggested previously), but definitely still sluggish.
- Disable Hardware Accerate Composition
- Reducing timeline window
- Bringing the timeline window on the same monitor as the preview window (kind of defeats the purpose of DUAL monitor) but helps a bit.
- Changing to HIGH DPI Settings to System > Causes low resolution preview and blurry interface.
- Disable your second monitor (just kidding).

Adobe must tackle the issue. It is NOT an isolated case. I can reproduce the issue on any system with dual 4k monitors. (Tested on 3 systems).

Please ADOBE, conduct a thorough analysis of the UI drawing issue using a complex composition setups and multiple open panels. The struggle is real.

Thank you

[kevinn95703102]

glad I found this thread, I have an HP OMEN gaming PC. I upgraded my monitors to dual Samsung 4K. Experiencing massive slow down all adobe apps. Reading this thread I see people only having problems with 4K monitors. I can confirm when I switched back to my 1080 P monitor, adobe apps performance went through the roof! So it seems to be confirmed in my opinion that adobe does not work with 4K monitors.

[anythingwilldo]

I'm on mac. If you open the get info window for each program there is an option to launch it in low resolution. The difference is negligible and 98% of my interface issues went away once I enabled that.

[TheFosterHouse]

wow... reported in 2018 and here we are 4 years later and the horribly laggy UI is still here. Machine speed and resolution of display are irrelevant to me (I haven't worked on a 1080 display in years.) This issue has plagued me.
Here's some example of what causes a slow laggy UI experience on a 24 core threadripper with a Quatro RTX 6000:
- More than 20 layers in the timeline.
- Layers or masks with their keyframes visible in the timeline.
- More than 10 masks visible in the comp window
- several effects properties visible in the timeline.

in other words: NORMAL OPERATIONS OF THE PROGRAM.

[Thomas24110540ckkw]

Just came here to say I have noticed a signifcant improvment to the resoniveness to the UI on 4k monitors with 150% scaling. I am working currently in a comp with 100+ layers which is where it would really start to slow down but I noticed it was running very smoothly. I can even move my timeline to my other montor and scolling is still the same speed!!

Thanks Adobe, this was a huge problem of mine and I can remember just how slow the UI would sometimes be with 100+ layers. Currently running AE 22.6 build 64 on windows 10. i9-12900k, 3090ti, 128gb of ram. 

[JayLash]

I've had a sluggish UI for a while on a 49" screen at 240hz.  I had custom DPI scaling and had a weird shadow around undocked UI panels.  After unsetting the custom DPI and signing out of windows and setting it to 100%, it's smooth again.

AFX 2023 (23.0.0) on Win 11