Interface is Slow and Laggy

[Marc Trzepla]

Dear Adobe,

Me again.

Please stop everything that you're doing with the development of new bells and whistles and doodads and put all your resources and firepower into resolving the years-old issue of the Slow and Laggy Interface in After Effects. Seriously. 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.

When I contact Support I'm told, "the issue that you are facing is a known issue and the same has been highlighted to the designated team who are working on getting the issue fixed in the future releases," but it has yet to be fixed.

Old After Effects was FASTER on OLDER laptops - I have been on modern workstation-build DESKTOPS that are slower in response. Makes me not want to work in After Effects. I feel bad for those starting out in motion graphics in 2020 and this is what they are introduced to.

SpaceX put two astronauts on the space station. Surely we can get a butter smooth interface in After Effects.

Thank you.

https://vimeo.com/441661685/b7aba12cba

[scrozier]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVu0uuGvEY0

@jenkmeister Ran the test again with layer controls off and it's marginally better but still concerning overall.

This time around trying to illustrate the performance drop when selecting more than 10 keyframes...same overall setup as before. 

In the beta (24.4.0 x20) w/ controls off I got about 25-30 FPS when selecting 10 keyframes and dragging them about (2-3 frames to update)

In the stable build (24.2.1) I got about 12-13FPS doing the same thing and the update time jumps all around from as good as 2 frames to as bad as 10 frames. So there has been a significant improvement when moving a small amount of keyframes. Not 60FPS smooth, but reasonably smooth overall. 

Again in the beta, once you jump up to 50 keyframes in the beta it takes about 6 frames to update the screen, or about 10FPS. About 2-3 FPS better than with layer controls left on but still nowhere near what I score as "smooth."

I didn't try to score 50 Keyframes in the stable build with controls off, but that is a known "laggy" interaction so didn't feel like scoring it.  

P.S Updated to the latest nvidia studio driver 551.86 for these second batch of tests. 

[֑nubnubbud]

Care to explain how a program's UI can get slower on faster, newer hardware? Or get slower with updates and bugfixes? I understand slight regressions here or there for important features, but this is ridiculous.

[Fresh Squeezed Creative]

The explanation is painfully obvious. 

Adobe are conpletely incapable of fixing these issues at this point. They are either incompetent, under staffed or under funded - or most likely all three

This issue is clearly really deep in old code carried on from the original Cosa software, and Adobe devs can seemingly only achieve add ons at this point. I doubt they even understand the original code. 

If they did, it would have been fixed years ago. 

Happy to be proven wrong, Adobe. 

[֑nubnubbud]

Well yeah, i know the answer, it was rhetorical, almost, but i'd at least like actual dev responses so I wouldn't have to speculate. If I know it's as bad as I think it is, then I wouldn't have to blame the devs, just the shareholders, managers, and leadership, but at the moment there is a significant lack of clarity and motivation being displayed, and it's frankly disrespectful when paying for it doesn't even let you own this mess. It's unusable because companies require stable versioning for proprietary addons and stable years-long workflows... but they're forced to pay yearly, for the honor of renting buggy software.

[scrozier]

@jenkmeister 

I'm using an M2 MacBook Pro on the current job I'm on and the AE interface comparatively flies compared to my Windows computer. Yes even in the current beta.  The CTI is basically glued to my mouse, even on a 4K display. Keyframes basically render at or near 60fps when dragging them around, or fast enough that I'm not questioning the stability of After Effects. 

Resizing panels is shockingly fast, that's always a lag fest on windows. And yes even when installing my standard glut of AE scripts to patch the holes in AEs functionality. 

I get that apple silicon is fast, but a 2080ti shouldn't struggle to draw AEs interface. Again I would point to blender or blackmagic to show examples of software that run fluidly. Do you think AE on Windows will ever reach parity with MacOs or should I just start saving up for a Apple Stuido. 

[jenkmeister]

We are working on getting Windows to be as smooth as the Mac version. Windows is slower in the released builds due it using older GDI+ drawing routines. The beta build is using Direct 2D and is faster, but still has plenty of other issues that need fixing. On the Mac, AE is using the OS supplied drawing routines and they are significantly faster as you've seen. I don't know if we will ever get to parity but it is something we are putting people on to work on.

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeisterwrote: “...but it is something we are putting people on to work on.”

You mean you PUT people on to work on, yes? Because they’ve already been hard at work all these years fixing this, right? Or is this basically that scene from The Princess Bride?

“...where every ship in my armada waits to accompany us on our honeymoon.”
“Every ship but your four fastest, you mean.”
“Hmm?”
“Every ship but the four you sent.”
“Ah, yes. Yes of course. Naturally not those four.”

In all seriousness, all these years - and this goes back even earlier than this thread’s first post in 2020 because the OG post from an older version of the Forum evaporated when the Forum was migrated over to its current incarnation - and the State of the Art is, “I don't know if we will ever get to parity...”?

Well, at least we have Darkest, Dark, and Light Color Themes.

...

[jenkmeister]

Put and, are putting more people on. I can't guarentee parity, we don't control the OS's, we don't control individual users hardware. We are committed to making it as good as we can. 

And yes you have dark, darkest and light modes because we have users who have accessibility needs that we also want to support. 

[Paul5E1C]

I'm sure those users who need accessibility options are really enjoying that they can now see it not working as it should while paying through the nose for it and relying on it for their income. Amazing that you can find sassiness in this car crash of a thread. 

[jenkmeister]

There was no sassiness in my response. Accessibility is important for a lot of AE's users. 

[Paul5E1C]

Yeah, so are indicators on cars, but they become a little pointless when the engine is broken. Definitely came across as sassy. 

[jenkmeister]

I am marking this topic as Started for Investigation and locking the thread.

If you have specific cases of UI issues that aren't already covered in this thread, feel free to start a new post with the issue, steps to reproduce, etc.