Render Issue: Optical Kerning with Multi-Frame Enabled Causes Jittering Character Spacing

[MixMasterMike]

Hello,

I am expericening a render with jittering chracter spacing when text layers are set to Optical Kerning and with the Multi-Frame render option checked. It does not happen consitently, but seems to happen when I am doing a large batch of renders. This is happening in both After Effects CC2022 & CC2023. The issue does not happen if I set the kerning to Metric...but we find the text layout looks better when set to Optical.

Here is a Frame.io link with several sampels of the issue: https://f.io/KfFRl2dm

Here are my specs:

App Versions: After Effects CC2022 (v22.6) & CC2023 (v23.1)

Platform: macOS Monterey 12.6.5 and macOS Ventrua 13.3.1

Since it's happening inconsitently, here's the best instructions I can give to reproduce the result:

1. Start a new project
2. Make sure "Enable Mulit-Frame Rendering" is CHECKED in the "Media & Performace" tab of the Preferences
3. Create a new comp and Add a text layer.
4. Set the kerning of the text layer to Optical
5. Add some simple postion or scaling animation to the text layer
6. Duplicate the comp at least 10 times
7. Add all of the comps to the render queue and render

Thanks in advance for your help.

[AustinAlexander]

I just ran into this yesterday! Worked on a project file that was handed off.

No animation done to the layers, however expressions were added to the source text property. Layers were copied across comps.