After Effects really slow with SF Pro Font

[Madeline5DD4]

Hello all, 

After Effects 2021 (18.0.1) has a real hard time processing the Mac standard SF Pro font on my Windows device. I installed it like any other font (unpackaged the OTF from the Apple website) and it works fine in all other programs, but for some reason After Effects doesn't like it? The 3-minute animation (motion blur, 20+ layers, with camera video) can render within 4 minutes, but when I put the lower thirds in render time skyrockets to almost 2 hours. 

It took me a while to figure out that it was the specific font, but I tested it with other windows & Adobe native fonts, and render time was fixed. 

Not sure if anyone has experienced this, or found a solution, but any help would be great! Normally, I would pick another font but brand requirements and whatnot.

Comp: 
Ryzen 1700x
32gb ram
1080ti

[TrendyWhistle]

Having the same issue here - the moment I changed to the SF font, AE is barely responsive at all. I've yet to try converting the fonts to TTF's or something else. Will give that a shot.

[TrendyWhistle]

Just tested other OTF vs TTF fonts on my computer and none of them cause any performance issues. The only one that does it is the SF family... I'm stumped.

[Sinan5FA2]

I'm also having this issue and I couldn't find a workaround. I downloaded the fonts from Apple but they make my AE run painfully slow. Has anyone found a solution? 

[NOAH5FD7]

I have the same issue! Please help 😞

[KingOfTheHacks]

Same issue - on an extremely tight turn project (of course) where I'm animating product interactions. The only workaround I can think of is to set all the type ahead of time in Illustrator or some such.

[Grantahull]

This is also a problem on my 2019 Mac Pro with Big Sur 11.4 so not just a PC issue.

[jmnow]

Wow, I'm glad i'm not the only one. The moment I added this font as live text my performance tanked. I'm on an iMac 4.2GhZ i7, 32GB ram, Radeon Pro 580 8GB gpu. I'm looking at 1h+ render time for 4 seconds of animation.

[Vinicius5FAA]

I'm having this same exact problem. How you guys made it work? Just changing the font to some similar like helvetica?  

[Vinicius5FAA]

I made a 2 layer + 2 text comp (using SF family) and it's already unusable (on a 2019 MBP 15").

[nishu_kush]

Hi all,

I did a test with the SF Pro font on windows. I didn't see any performance/export time issue.

Could you provide a project file that repeats the issue to test at our end?

We're here to help.

Thanks,

Nishu

[Sinan5FA2]

Hi Nishu! This problem only happens on Mac from what I understood, I also noticed some people reporting this issue on other forums and they were also on Mac. It seems to happen when you install the most updated fonts from the original source.

If you find an install older versions of SF fonts, the lag is gone. 

[Sinan5FA2]

Just noticed the original post was from a person using Windows. Maybe mine is a different issue from the person who posted the original post or maybe its related to rendering of the newest SF fonts. 

[Mancerrss]

Has anyone on Adobe looked into this yet?

Me on my side, I'm having severe crashes when using a Text Layer in a Tracked Camera.
The font is working well in a normal Text layer tho, but on a Tracked Camera it crashes it.

AE crashes when selecting any Apple's SF Pro Font Family

Can we get this fixed and looked at soon??

[defaultr2hhwb0fwa5n]

Same problem with SF Pro. 

[weccleston]

Same issue here.  It's killing me.  Mac OS 11.1, After Effects 18.4.1

[weccleston]

Just FYI - Not sure if this will work for everyone, but I downloaded the SF Pro fonts from cufonfonts.com and installed them with Suitcase Fusion, as opposed to the Apple versions that come with their own installer, and I'm no longer having the issue.

[nishu_kush]

Hi all,

This is issue has been reported as a bug. After Effects engineers are working on a fix.

Let us know if there are any other questions.

Thanks,

Nishu

[TheOtherMartinTaylor]

Is there a work around until a fix is forthcoming? I have an AE project to mimic a iPad app and the SF font makes it nearly impossible to navigate around.

[michaelb9396182]

OMG, this has been killing me for nearly 2 weeks!  The sluggish delay just to paste text and move the field is painfully slow, but the render times... what would normally be a 30 second render in ME took almost 40 minutes with the SF Hello font.  Reinstalling the font made no difference.  Other typical fonts are no problem.  Has anyone cracked the mystery on this yet???

[JordanAHill]

I've started two new projects with two different newly-installed fonts and am having the same exact issue everyone else is describing. I don't think this issue is unique to one specific font, unfortunately. I had to find an older version of the same font from a sketchy site online before AE stopped running absurdly slow with it.

Unfortunately, this new project of mine uses a custom typeface for the brand, so I'm sort of SOL on this one.

[sinhlvc]

It's really unbelievable that this is still a problem. I'm unable to work properly because of this. It's been months since this was reported. Is there any updates on this as it's still the same on AE beta?

[Chingun5EA3]

Same issue here, but now happening to Adobe Illustrator. 

When searching SF fonts from the library its slowing down(lagging) 2-3 seconds. Its so annoying x(

[defaultc91kpax9kndc]

I have a similar problem on my Macbook Pro and Macbook Air. I hoped for version 22, which is referenced by support before the release, but the problem has not been resolved. 

[Dr Ken R Lunde]

For those using the SF Pro or SF Hello fonts, and are experiencing this performance issue in Adobe After Effects, please let me know which version you are using. You can use the Font Book app or the Finder (File > Get Info or Command-I) to get the version number, which should follow the pattern nn.ndnen. I have a theory as to what is causing this particular performance issue, and knowing the version would be helpful.