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

[nubnubbud]

slow drawing code should be little to no issue- opengl and opencl both run extremely fast when drawing splines, even in something as slow as python. AE should be in C or C++ or something similar. if you guys need help drawing a few pixels at almost no resource usage, you might want to look at Blender's code. it's freely available and easy to browse. best of all, it works in both C and C++, with python API for examples on exposing and allowing extension from external scripts.

[PanBeep]

Dear ADOBE, how many times do we have to ask you fixed this software?

[scrozier]

@jenkmeister 

Any updates on the interface project? I get you said it will take "awhile" but I think it would go a long way for me and others if you actually pushed some of this work into the beta? Is there an alpha build of it at least? I will grant that scrubbing the playhead on Windows is much improved, so kudos there, but basic things like selecting many keyframes and moving them is still a slideshow after nearly 6 months. I can replicate the OPs behavior on just a stack of solids with position keyframes readily. Thats some slow progress after five years  Can Adobe hire an engineer to write this code? I'd pay an extra dollar a month just not to be presented with this every day. I've said it before but I could care less about (sorry to say) half-baked 3D features into AE if the interface still runs at 3fps. If you can't move a 3D gizmo at more than 12fps no one is going to want to use the 3D features as a serious tool when Blender exists for free. 

[jenkmeister]

@scrozier Nothing too much to share out at this time. There is work on-going but I can't commit to any time frame. As we complete pieces and we are happy with those working well, we will push things to Beta. Timeline performance is still being looked at; we are down in the bowels of graphic drawing routines trying to understand the perf and threading issues to identify the right fixes. We'll post back here as we release fixes though.

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeister

OP here.  I’m a big fan of clues. (puts on deerstalker cap)

Here’s a screen capture of me in the most recent non-beta version of After Effects noticing how toggling SOLO status is part of Laggy World™. Shy, however, is ROCKET fast. Hmmm, I wonder. Why...

My “I’m not a developer, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night” gut says the Solo behavior is 100% ‘interface’ related and NOT ‘render’ related - I’ve always had the impression that solo’ing a selection of layers will only refresh the comp viewer ONCE, NOT one at a time for every single layer, so the delay is not ‘how long it takes to composite the layers in the viewer.’ It’s not, “Step 1) Select All, Step 2) Click one of the Solo buttons, 3) Solo Layer 1 and render, 4) Solo Layer 2 and render 5) Solo Layer 3 and render, etc.. In this sequence I do not watch the comp viewer pop-pop-pop the visibility of layers in progression. So this delay we see in this screen capture? Interface redraw.

Solo button switching is interface, Shy toggling is interface, but they behave completely differently, like night and day. So now the question is, what’s the difference in the code that toggles SHY versus SOLO? Which leads us to, could the code that draws SHY inform the fix for the overall Laggy Interface?

vimeo.com/manage/videos/841378936

[Lasse Gjertsen]

I could be out in the sun with my friends and enjoy my summer vacation, but here I am, PAST a deadline because this god awful bug ridden piece of junk of a software keeps lagging, freezing and crashing, not to mention that idiotic in your face autosave abrupting me in the middle of my flow all the time so I have to sit there and WAIT for it to finish... WHY?! I sit there and think of how After Effects have taken away the joy of working with graphic design and animation for me. I really mean this. I will never, NEVER, EVER touch AE or any of the other Adobe programs once I finish this project. I just want to scream out loud in frustration and despair.
Oh wait...
I do.
Every day.

[jenkmeister]

@Marc Trzepla That's a new one. I can't say I've seen the UI delay like that. Is this with all projects, some projects, got anything more you can share with us?

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeister This is with all projects - old projects re-opened, current projects, and new-from-scratch projects, given there are a sufficient enough number of layers to see the delay.  It’s been this way since After Effects’ interface lag started years ago. 

I’ve experienced this Slow Solo and the overall lag on 3 computers since then - a desktop and two laptops, neither a clone of the others.  Broad brushstrokes, the only shared features are 1) Windows 10 machines 2) Nvidia graphics cards (each different) and 3) After Effects.  Pretty much every other program on these computers works as expected which leaves me giving After Effects the evil eye.

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeister 

Not a new example - part and parcel of the Laggy After Effects Interface I’ve been describing for years - but just thought I’d share the following screen grab to illustrate my pain.  Again, not new, not limited to the computer I’m currently on - I’ve experienced this over multiple computers where After Effects has been installed from scratch.  Enjoy

https://vimeo.com/854172880

[Paul5E1C]

Yes, this. The very basics of the software seem broken while they are adding all kinds of useless junk that will never be used by professionals. Shape and text layers have become a joke, especially in 2.5D space. Every project is taking longer because of perpetual lag. 

[tsuku_si]

I'm surprised so many users are struggling with UI issues.

This is my case, but when the number of selected key frames exceeds 50, I have a problem with the selected key frames being slow to manipulate.
This has been the issue in the past with AfterEffects, but I feel like this has gotten worse at an accelerated rate since the major updates in the last few years.

Whether it's a change to 3Dgizmos, a UI refresh for keyframe, or the addition of labeling features, it's not clear which feature additions are affecting the UI issue.
I hope you can fix this issue as soon as possible.

I screen-recorded the actual malfunction happening and uploaded it to the link.
https://autode.sk/3ELGLE8

In this video, you open the same project in 2 versions of AfterEffects, the latest stable version and CC 2014, and do the exact same thing.
UI settings are set to the default state and preview updates are disabled.
use the same hardware environment.

[scrozier]

This is wild. 

[Carlos Zenzuke Albarran]

Oh man, this is the clearest example I've seen yet. I was starting to think I was imagining I used to work a lot faster in a crappy laptop on 2014.

[jenkmeister]

@tsuku_si Just to confirm, do you have Show Overlays on or off in the 2014 release? We know that's the major cause of slowdowns of the UI on Windows, which we are working improving, but I can't tell from the cropped video. 

[tsuku_si]

@jenkmeister 

Thank you for your reply.
I didn't know what "show overlays" meant, so I just uploaded a new full-screen recording.

If you were saying to the display options in the layer controls, the results were about the same for both enabled and disabled.

I also additionally recorded the state of having view updates enabled and the latency that occurs when you move a batch of key frames using a script.

Check out the video at the link below.

CC2014(13.2)

https://autode.sk/3rlm6Um

2023(23.6)

https://autode.sk/3EThRSZ

*Please note that due to project data involving third-party rights, a black plane is placed in the foreground of the composition.

[jenkmeister]

@tsuku_si Thanks for those videos. The menu option for layer controls is the one I was talking about. 

What screen resolution are you running on that monitor? 

[tsuku_si]

@jenkmeister 

Thank you for watching videos.

I'm relieved that my understanding is correct.

I am currently working with a 4K(3840x2160) monitor.
I was working on a WQHD(2560x1440) monitor until a few months ago, and I remember there were similar UI lag.

[tsuku_si]

@jenkmeister 

I'm sorry for multiple reply.

I will add the missing information below.

Reproduced only in the 2023, but if I check Handles in the Layer Controls, only the view panel operations experience lag.
It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the lag in the timeline panel.

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeister 

OP here.  

Quick 1920 x 1080 screen recording showing this issue is not limited to 4K 3840 x 2160 displays.  No cheating - watch it start to finish, in realtime.  No scrubbing ahead.

vimeo.com/867463424

Marc

[MrMaxBre]

^I have the same experience. We've been complaining for years now .. still a mystery for the Adobe team..
Not a perfect solution but if you have a supported graphics try 4XX Nvidia Drivers, this one gives me much smoother timeline than any 5XX drivers. Try this: https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/159884/en-us/

[scrozier]

Yeah its been a number of years in this state, they say they are making progress, but I feel like they should pull all the engineers doing 3D or Ai or literally any other feature, and just focus on making the program not go into slideshow mode on basic operations like selecting keyframes. It worked better nearly 10 years ago! I get that the code is old, or that is may be hard, but this is a #1 priority for myself and anyone else who has to work in AE on a regular basis. It's so painful on complicated projects. I think I've said all this stuff before multiple times but its hard to fathom what is taking so long for a company with Adobe's (financial) resoruces. They should have been able to build After Effects from scratch in the time its taking to work out these interface bugs.  

[Fresh Squeezed Creative]

@jenkmeister Nothing to share at this time?

We're paying youcompanbyr for this, "Service."
Remember?

[jenkmeister]

We are investigating the reports and discussing what fixes we can make. I wish it was as simple as tweak this one variable and boom, all will be fixed. But unfortunately AE is exceptionally complicated and every time we touch one thing, we have to check a thousand other things. I know you're paying for AE, I promise you I feel the weight of our customers every single day and night. I am sorry we can't move as fast as you need us too. 

[PanBeep]

Blender is exceptionally complicated and every time the developers touch one thing they make if faster and better.

I'm not sure what went wrong with the AE development but if I was in charge of this software or company I would try to develop it from scratch to make sure it uses moderm software frameworks and hardware.

[Marc Trzepla]

@jenkmeister

Let me start by saying I am not a developer / programmer, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night, so what I have to say may be science fiction.

Several versions ago the After Effects render queue allowed users to twirl down an info panel to see the step-by-step process of a render in progress. When I saw that a frame was taking many seconds to render I could watch the render stack process and see that “Layer 3 in Comp A was taking 8 seconds to add a 30-step Forced Motion Blur effect.” Made it very easy to pinpoint bottlenecks and come up with faster workarounds. (The replacement “go into each and every comp and open the Render Time Bar Chart column” does something similar, but is a much more tedious process .. but I digress.)

--> Is there an Adobe tool I could run that would monitor my workflow, maybe “record” when I’m working in the interface to see what function is being called when, to see where After Effects is getting tied up, just like that legacy render queue info panel? Let me know if I’m just making things up after watching too much CSI. Zoom. Now enhance.

Marc