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

[jenkmeister]

@scrozier 100% agree. We are going to fix the overlay performance issue but we know there is more there to fix, which we are trying to do asap to get things back to a useable state. As to a UI rewrite, hard for me to share too much of our plans, but we know this needs to be a priority so you can infer we are looking at it seriously. 

[jenkmeister]

A quick Saturday update for folks on this most recent issue. We were able to finally get a repro internally and understand the change that is causing the issue. We are working on a fix over the weekend and looking at pushing out a 23.2.1 update asap with this fix plus a couple of other unrelated issues. We are also still working on the layer overlay being slow (primarily on Windows) and hope to have a fix for that in the future. 

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeister I appreciate the effort, especially since this original (migrated) post is from 2020.  (SpaceX has astronauts?!  What’s next?)

That said, I hope that the 23.2.1 update fixes what I (and I’m assuming many others) have been experiencing for years (I can recall this issue rearing its head as early as late 2018, 2019..) and not just whatever lag users are now experiencing because of something that broke under the hood limited to between 23.0 and 23.1.

Thank you,

Marc

[jenkmeister]

No, I can't commit to 23.2.1 fixing the long-standing issues. We'd like to get 23.2.1 out in the next week if we can. Right now the focus is getting things back to the perf they were in 23.0. The layer controls slowdown is in investigation but is looking like it'll need more time to be coded and fixed on the Windows side so that might be a few months. Other slowdowns beyond that are things we are looking at with a larger UI update taking place likely this year. I know that probably doesn't sound great or helpful, but trying to be transparent about where we are at and what we are working on, at least the best I can. 

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeisterI understand completely and really appreciate the transparency.  It calms me to know that someone in Development is at least aware of the older lag issue and plans to remedy it -at some point-.  I can’t begin to describe how my heart sank when the impression I got from recent posts was “we (Adobe) haven’t been aware of/working on this issue you chatted with Support about and reported back in 2020.”

[scrozier]

Can't overstate how huge of a day-to-day impact a smooth interface would be to this program. More often than not these days I feel like my work gets done despite the state of the software instead of because of it. 

To quote the OP:

"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."

I too, have been in a state of limbo of not wanting to ditch AE, thinking surely Adobe will fix this important industry tool. There still isnt a true viable competitor I am aware of that really nails the 2D mo-graph and compositing niche, but that shouldn't be why I am paying for this software. Autograph looks promising but their pricing is pretty out of line. 

Crossing my fingers that this finally floats to the top of priorities and not some AI-Whiz-Bang tool that might sell some seats, but won't fundementally change these longstanding codebase probelms. 

Thanks again for responding to this long-unaswered thread. As they say, the frist step is acknowledging that there is a problem ;-). 

[jenkmeister]

FYI, the first fix, to restore the performance on Windows from 23.0, is now in beta, starting with build 36. We are working on getting a 23.2.1 shipped in the next few days for all users that will contain that fix. 

[Sterphy]

Since installing this things have actually gotten worse.  I have to purge the memory EVERY time I make a change, I have to quit out of the app every 10-20 minutes when purging doesn't work.  Even just the most basic tasks take forever, I'm constantly getting dropped frames and audio problems that I never had before.  I'm sorry, but at this point the Adobe devs should be ashamed of themselves, because I would be if I produced work to such a poor standard.  It's unacceptable now. 

[jenkmeister]

@Sterphy When you say "installing this", which version of AE are you referring to, what version did you come from? What are your computer specs? What does your project look like? I'd like to be able to help figure out what's going on. 

[scrozier]

With layer controls off it seems keyframes render maybe 20-50% faster on my system? Don't have time to count repeated frames but thats my unscientific analysis. 

With layer controls on it's still pretty atrocious, that one seems to be the real killer. 

https://youtu.be/w9BGd-yOsbw

[jenkmeister]

@scrozier Yep. Windows is significantly worse with layer controls on, especially the more layers you have at that point of time in the comp. Mac is better, perhaps 10-20% slower with layer controls on. So that's definitely the focus right now to get that into a much better state, Windows and Mac. 

[quirky_finder1587]

So far it seems better for me with the 23.2.1 update. Will have to spend more time working to see if everything is working properly tho. But please Adobe, stop implementing new useless tools and focus on performance, workflow and optimisation. You have a suite of software that do not even share the same workflow, this is usually a pain to have to adapt to each software's mind knowing they come from the same company. Sure we develop instinct by the time and we know how to make things work but still... Why do we need to install 50 thurd party plugins to have a decent workflow in After Effect? This is not normal in my opinion. Still, very basic features are not implemented and I don't even talk about the outdated presets from another age. You keep implementing new things, when there isn't even the simple basic stuff that could help work faster straight out of the box without installin 50 plugins. It is a pain everytime I know I'm gonna have to open After Effects, I don't think this is normal and I don't think it should be seen as a success from Adobe point of view. We use your stuff because there is no other alternative for the moment. Not because you have the best tool, just because it is barely the only tool. In terms of business it sure may be profitable, but for the end user... Please just focus on making basic things work, work fast, both on mac AND windows.

[Roberto Tafuro]

Agree with you all...AE have a lot of new unuseful things, like label keyframes, animation presets, this ugly track matte new feature (yep...it's really terrible, if you have a lot of layers connected it begins to be a nightmare), this new native 3d objects, the Cineware useless thing (sorry, but it is super buggy and super time consuming) and so on, but in 2023 we can't select multiple keyframes from multiple layers and copy paste. Really don't understand how this new features can change my way to work, especially if the general program performance is laggy and terrible. So, maybe stop new unuseful features, and bring back a working program. We are over 20 years motion graphers, we do our work as always, we don't need new features, we need stability.

[jackthegiantslayer]

@jenkmeister 

"It's no small undertaking and would likely stop development on just about everything else in AE (we aren't a very big team) so like everything in software, we need to trade off doing that vs. everything else users are asking for."

Can someone there tell me why, given the state of After Effects right now, Adobe can't take some of those record profits and hire more people to facilitate your team needs? Why on earth do we keep having to hear how small your team is to justify the lack of updates?

I really appreciate your input here as well as the turn the team has made in communication with the greater community, I just wish that Adobe would give your team the support it deserves.

[jenkmeister]

Specific to the timeline lag issue in this thread, 23.2.1 has shipped to all users with a fix that restored the timeline interaction performance to 22.6/23.0's performance. We also have testing going internally on a second fix that should resolve most performance issues scrubbling around the timeline and moving layers and keyframes, especially on Windows. In some cases, 20x faster. Testing going well, we should have that into beta next week for anyone to try out and then into then hopefully into the 23.3 release for all users. 

[jenkmeister]

@jackthegiantslayer you're asking very good questions. I wish I had better answers on the headcount situation. I can say if you look around tech at the moment, there seems to be a lot of freezing of headcount/hiring, and Adobe isn't immune to that. 

That said, we have been shifting our priorities to the UI and quality of life improvements over the past couple of months. Your post came in while I was writing an update, but we do have some nice perf updates in the timeline moving through testing right now. Even once that fix is out, we plan to continue to work on the UI this year - it needs to get out of the way to let you make your designs come to life as fast as possible. 

[Ando0o0]

I found the answer every one! I am using another software and it works great!

[nubnubbud]

@Ando0o0 same here! 

Mine even use all of my GPU and all of my cpu! I'm excited about upgrading my parts for the first time in over half a decade! It's still a bit jarring to have the UI always usable no matter how much video processing chokes on a frame, but at least there's persistent autosaves and industry standard file compatibility!

I've come to the epiphany that I don't care who makes the next AE, and with how adobe treats us, i don't think I want it to be them.

[scrozier]

@jenkmeister 

Got back from a trip, trying out the newest Beta (43) and its night and day on that layer control bug! Feels good to get some responsiveness back after years of going in the opposite direction! Keep up the good work. I will say with many layers selected, the lag is still pretty high, but If you don't actually select layers its back to behaving at normal levels of jank. Glad to see things resolving quickly! 

I have other killer lag bugs and interface complaints but am afraid to push my luck! 

[jenkmeister]

Send them along. If we can repro, we want to fix them!

[scrozier]

@jenkmeister 

Not sure this falls under this thread or if it is a separate issue but since it deals with layer controls I'll just add this here: 

Any time I'm working on a multi-plane 3D project and have 3D layer control enabled, trying to adjust the position of multiple 3d layers, becomes an absolute slideshow. Something about the 3D Layer Control Gizmo renders very, very poorly. It also effects scrubbing performance if multiple 3D gizmos are visible. I noticed this when we switched over from the old 3D gizmo (looked more like a wireframe) and the current 3D gizmo (more of a filled in look). I don't have the old version of AE with the old 3D gizmo but I can say anecdotally it rendered a lot less choppily. 

Here is a video showing how badly the gizmo can slow down just trying to tweak z-position on a stack of solids. I can send this project file if that helps. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaHj_JV64gI

When the gizmos are turned off you can move things with a relative confidence, but when they are turned back on its just anyones guess where those layers will land.

Just another example of the interface getting in the way of work. The 3D gizmos should not impact responsiveness they should just work!. 

P.S. This is in the current beta so this was not fixed with the current layer control adjustment on Windows. 

P.P.S. Turning on the new Mecrury 3D feature doesn't make the gizmo render any faster either. 

[Youlittlebooty]

Please @jenkmeister look into this issue. Since this upgrade, I am unable to drag around a few lines of text without severe lag.

[jenkmeister]

@Youlittlebooty Have you updated to 23.2.1? The first lag fix is in that release. There is a second one, more for these long-standing issues, currently in 23.3 in the AE Beta builds. 

[scrozier]

Beend doing some animation work in blender and although I really miss a lot of my muscle memory and familiarity its night and day how well it handles rendering its dope sheet (timeline). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUuVezGb3a4

I mean this mostly as a joke but since it's open source can you just go in there and steal their code! It runs flawlessly. 

[Warren Heaton]

There must be something conflicting with your After Effects UI.