After Effects really slow with SF Pro Font

Report · Apr 01, 2021

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

Report · Nov 09, 2021

I have continued to experience severe slow downs when using SFHello fonts in After Effects. I have the following version installed:

17.0d2e1

This is a translated font from TTC to OTF, but still has issues with AE 2020 and AE 2021, and seems to affect MOGRTs used in Premiere as well, and can cause dramatically increased render times. The TTC original has the same effect.

Report · Nov 09, 2021

Thank you. This data point is helpful, and I was able to find and inspect the SF Hello Version 17.0d2e1 fonts. The theory that I have holds for these fonts, in terms of the specific attribute that I think is causing the issue.

BTW, the OTC is simply a repackaging of OTFs that allows some font tables, such as 'cmap' and 'GSUB', to be shared. I would expect them to behave the same.

Report · Nov 10, 2021

I have not checked again recently but the version I presently have for SF Pro: 17.0d9e1

Report · Nov 10, 2021

I have not checked again recently but the version I presently have for SF Pro: 17.0d9e1

Report · Nov 10, 2021

Very helpful. Thank you.

Report · Nov 15, 2021

Just out of curiosity, has anyone in this thread tried the problematic fonts in the latest Adobe After Effects 2022 Beta, which is Version 22.1.1? The reason I ask is because the Unified Text Engine, which replaces the previous text engines, is now applied to all languages and scripts. The text engine preference is in After Effects > Preferences > Type… in the non-Beta version. The UTE has the potential to address this performance issue, at least to the point that it is worthwhile to test.

Report · Dec 06, 2021

I think I have a workaround.

I tried a third party font management app, Right Font. I didn't research it very hard, and because this was a test. I didn't want to spend money. It's free.

In Font Book I deactivated all the SF pro fonts. Then to be sure there was no overlap I removed all SF Pro font files from the library font folder that Font Book was using. I put the font files in a new folder in my Docs, just called Fonts. From that new folder I imported all the SF Pro fonts into the application Right Font and activated them there.

So far so good in AE. Now I can use the type animators again, yay!

If anyone else tries this an it works (or doesn't) please post your results!

Report · Dec 06, 2021

While I cannot comment on the workaround stated above, because I am unfamiliar with Right Font, I can reveal the results of testing my theory about the particular font attribute that is triggering the exceptionally slow performance in Adobe After Effects.

My theory, which has been confirmed through testing, is that the ratio of characters to glyphs is triggering the exceptionally slow performance. The further that the character to glyph ratio deviates from 1:1, in favor of glyphs, the slower the performance.

The following are the numbers of characters and glyphs in the public-facing SF Pro Version 17.0d12e1 fonts: 5,727 characters and 18,876 glyphs. The SF Symbols repertoire includes small and larger versions of the characters that are accessed via OpenType stylistic set features, and are therefore not directly encoded. The number of encoded SF Symbols in the Version 17.0d12e1 fonts is 3,942, meaning that the number of associated glyphs is three times that figure. The exact ratio of characters to glyphs is 1:3.3, which is quite far from 1:1. To test my theory, I copied the mappings for the 3,942 SF Symbols in Plane 16 to Planes 13 and 15, which resulted in fonts with 13,611 characters and the same figure of 18,876 glyphs. The ratio of characters to glyphs dropped to 1:1.39, and the performance issues went away.

I am not sure how closely Adobe is monitoring this thread, but I will be conveying these results to Adobe in the coming days, in hope that the Adobe After Effects team can address this performance issue.

Report · Dec 07, 2021

That's a LOT of glyphs. I'm sure that affects performance. I don't want to discount Dr. Ken's hypothesis because I think the large number of glyphs in SF Pro is definitely cumbersome and I would like to know Adobe's thoughts on this bug.

My experience is that Apple's Font Book, which has always been lacking in brain capacity, is also a culprit.

To be clear, I am not recommending Right Font. I needed a free fast option from the App Store to test on my work machine. Right Font fit the bill. After removing SF Pro from Apple's Font Book and adding to Right Font, I was able to work with SF Pro in After Effects without losing my mind.

My preferred font manager is FontExplorer, which I own for my personal use and highly recommend. I tested some of the same AE files on my personal machine, where I have Font Explorer X installed as my font manager. I had no issues with SF Pro.

Report · Dec 24, 2021

Hello everybody,

I really have the same issue, any solution so far ?

I spend three days working on a project that cool takes only one hour, only just because of this font's issue. The only solution I know so far is to replace the missing font one by one in others to have the AFX working smoothly again.

Let say if you have 2000 Layes with missing font in different comp, this is not going to be solved manually. All the giving solution in this discussion did not solve the issue. I just spend another day out trying those solutions with fails.

I am using AFX 2022.

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Report · Feb 14, 2022

Had the same issue, was driving me crazy. Mac user here but my After Effects file using SF Pro made it extremely slow and unusable. I had a new computer, downloaded the fonts from the original source https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ and this is what screwed everything up. Ended up taking SF Pro font files from my old machine and everything worked perfectly! So bizarre, thanks all who posted here for all the tips.

Report · Feb 21, 2022

I thought I was going crazy! restarting AE, restarting my Mac! I removed the SF Text layer and it works perfectly again. I can confirm this is still a problem in AE 22.2.0 (Build 120) with SF Pro, SF Pro text, SF Pro Display.

Report · Feb 21, 2022

Thanks for sharing your finding, Anthony.

Engineers are working on fixing it. Keep an eye on the updates.

Thanks,

Nishu

Report · Mar 17, 2022

Is this now considered fixed?

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

Report · Oct 23, 2024

Hello nishu,
The year is 2024 and I am having the same problem in illustrator. I guess Adobe engineers are still trying to solve the problem 🙂

Report · Oct 23, 2024

Thanks for reaching out. To get your issue to the right team, please create a post about it in the Illustrator Community.

Best,

Nishu

Report · Mar 28, 2022

So SFPro version 17.1 that released last year bumped the size of the font family 10x from 300KB to 3MB EACH. Was running into this issue and bumped down to SFPro version 13 and everything ran perfectly.

Report · Mar 29, 2022

Thanks! That's a good workaround.

I also found that by using a third party font manager app like Font Explorer or RightFont instead of FontBook I was able to work with the newer version of SF Pro just fine. FontBook comes pre-installed on all Apple computers and I've always found it to be a lacking. Now I have another reason to leave it behind.

Report · Apr 06, 2022

Yup, same here! As soon as I put a tiny text in the SF font my AE project freaked out and the Unknown exception prompt came on etc. Deleted the text and hey presto! M

Report · Apr 06, 2022

I've suffered so much because of this issue. I deeply feel for all the creative professionals out there. Just wanted to say, this solved my issue, and AE/PS is no longer lagging for me. I hope this solves your issue as well.

Download from here: https://github.com/tylerwolf35/AppleFonts

Font Version: 15.0d5e5

Thank you Tyler Wolf.

Report · Jun 09, 2022

Thank you!!!!

Report · May 26, 2022

We recently integrated some improvments which target fonts like these - if you are able, please try our Beta 22.5.0 (Build 36) currently available on CC and please share your experience.

SF Pro Compact Display is what I have tested with and it is 3x faster now, but still 3x slower than say Arial. In my opinion it takes it from being impossible to being just sluggish.

Douglas Waterfall

After Effects Engineering

Report · Jun 09, 2022

Still have a serious issue with this SF Pro font, I can't even have it display properly in After Effects anymore, but it is a font we have to use all the time to mock any Mac / iPhone screens. Now I have to try to make everything in illustrator or Photoshop and avoid live text in AE... Wasted a long time no to mention the number of limitations I am facing for not being able to animate them in AE as text. Fixes or workaround soon will be apperciated.

Report · Jun 09, 2022

Other than the slowness of the handling of this font (and some of the other SF Pro fonts), the only other issue I am aware specific to SF Pro in particular is the incorrect display of the regular (normal?) face for all styles other than regular - it is covered in this forum post.

Is this the behavior that you are referring to? If yes, then we know about this and are trying to work out the right fix for a number of Adobe products, not just After Effects. Some proposed solutions fix After Effects but break another apps. It is being actively considered.

If you are seeing different behavior than described above, we would very much like to learn more about what you are seeing so we can understand it.

Douglas Waterfall

After Effects Engineering

Report · Jun 16, 2022

copy that, I'm working on an apple project and they gave me that fon. I was first like what the heck why is my AE project so slow all of a sudden? Talked to other animators working on the same project and everyone had the same porblem. I'm calling it the font from hell.