Text Jitter Caused by Optical Kerning in Essential Properties

[Motion Forward]

When using essential properties for text, a bug occasionally causes text jitter issues during rendering. This result is unpredictable but usually occurs after editing the text with essential properties.

The problem occurs when using optical kerning with essential properties. The fix for now: when using text in essential properties, ensure the kerning is set to "metric" instead of "optical." The jitter seems to occur only when kerning is set to "optical," and appears to switch back to "metric" kerning only for a few frames shown below. 

flicker issue with optical kerning

no flicker with metric kerning

This error occurs in both After Effects and Premiere (when using MoGRTs created in After Effects), as Premiere relies on After Effects for rendering MoGRTs.

The solution: Until the bug is addressed, always use "metric" kerning when working with essential properties for text in After Effects and creating MoGRTs.

If you have a MoGRT using "optical kerning," open it in After Effects, reveal the source text, change it to "metric" kerning, re-save the MoGRT, and replace it in your timeline. When prompted, choose to update all.

Hope that this bug can be addressed. thanks!

[krejue]

In our case, it is changing the spacing in a really ugly way. 1 and 0 arevery far from each other. Is there no other solution?

[nishu_kush]

Let us know if you're still having the issue in the new version.
I am moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for now.

Thanks,
Nishu

[Aaron Cobb]

On what version of AE is this fixed? I'm encountering a similar kerning glitch very sporadically when rendering graphics in the render queue (not in MOGRTS) in AE 23.6.0. The text is set to Optical kerning, but when it glitches the kerning only changes between certain pairs, and doesn't seem to match the Metrics kerning for those pairs. We are set to upgrade to AE 24.x sometime in the coming months, so if this is fixed in that version I can just be vigilant about spotting it when it occurs and re-rendering.

[nishu_kush]

We're still investigating this. I tried reproducing it on my end several times, but it didn't flicker. Can you share a file that repeats the issue? Happy to look into it. Feel free to DM me.

Thanks,

Nishu

[Aaron Cobb]

I'm sorry for not getting back earlier on this, I do still want help with this, but I need to put together a more pared down project file to send you, and doing so while retaining whatever factor is causing the glitches is proving more difficult than I thought it would be.

[Matthew380900483kge]

I am also having this issue, in the 2025 update.

[Aaron Cobb]

I feel like we should compare notes on this:

What typeface is glitching? I am seeing a lot of glitching with certaing kerning pairs of Neue Plak Regular, (ST, RO, OL, and IN) though I have also seen very subtle glitching happen with much, much lower incidence with Arial Regular.

Are you using a lot of expressions or text animators?

Are you using small caps or any other of the character palette faux style attributes?

If you change your text to use Metrics kerning does the glitching go away?

[Matthew380900483kge]

Hey - absolutely, would be great to compare. The typeface that's glitching is Poppins Semibold. I am using expressions and animators - to make text animate in, to set fill color, and to dynamically set the font from a controller null in a different comp. I was able to fix it by setting kerning to metrics. I wouldn't call it subtle, but I wouldn't call it outrageous either. Noticeable, which is problem enough.

[Aaron Cobb]

This is great info. What kerning pairs have been particular problems with Poppins Semibold?

[Aaron Cobb]

I just installed Poppins Semibold and tried it with my test project, but didn't get any jitter. If you can let me know what kerning pairs you are seeing the jitter on, I can use those to test and see if I get similar results.

[krejue]

We have some new issue with CC24, maybe related.

In our Essential Template or Mogrt in Premiere, the font changes some lines or even just some letters. May it be connected to our P4000 GPU? Nvidia Driver is: 572,16

In After Effects, it helped deleting cache files.

In Premiere and Media Encoder it did not help to delete them. Is there some more data stored? After creating a new user, the rendering was ok.

The behavier in Premiere ist a little diffrent than in after effects. In premiere the preview is ok, but after software rendering, some letters are changed the font type.

[Paul Mumford]

I've hit this issue on a project this week using Noto Sans JP.

Switching from Optical -> Metrics looks a tiny bit better but several of the characters are twitching still when viewed up close.

🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲

[giu_camblor]

Simply disable the ‘Multiframe rendering’ option in the AE preferences.

[Paul Mumford]

This did not fix the problem. We're also working at scale on a renderfarm with + 100 nodes.

After extensive testing and investigations, we found changing the font size to something with a fractional value fixed the issue. For example rather than 16, we used 16.01. Clearly there is something wrong under the hood of the text rendering engine.

[emile_3380]

This worked for me too, even with the Optical setting. Setting the font size to XX.01 still showed some jittering, albeit less. But setting the size to XX.02 stopped it (for now).

[krejue]

That’s not a very great solution- this will impact performance very much.

[Shebbe]

We are also plagued by this issue with a particular project at the moment. This is really problematic since it concerns a lot of asset deliverables. 

Happy to share a project privately for investigation. Who can I send it to? 
We need a solution asap.

[Paul Mumford]

Hey Shebbe,

We found a work around on this. We changed the kerning from optical to metric AND the font size from a round number like 11 to a fractional number like 11.01

Give it a try

Give it a try, it might work

[Shebbe]

Hey Paul,

Before posting this, my colleague already confirmed to me that the same issue arises when using metric kerning. He also tried the fractional font size which only seems to help temporarily (cache refresh or whatever?) but with later renders it comes up again.

[emile_3380]

Did you end up resolving this btw? The fractional font sizing worked for me but I'm concerned the issue will come up again.