Weird behaviour: Laggy scrubbing, unless path is selected

[Martin Matthias]

Hey there,

I experience a weird behaviour in After Effects.

I'm currently working on a character rig with many shape layers and expressions, so scrubbing the timeline is quite laggy and uncomfortable. Unless .... I select a path. It seems like After Effects is able to render quicker, but it only does so when a path is selected. Why is that? Could Adobe slightly tweak the scrubbing code to massively gain performance?

Here's a video of the behaviour.

Best,

Martin

[Mylenium]

Selecting a path changes the rendering context due to having to draw the overlays for the paths. And that in itself could be the answer: You are adding overhead by relying on hardware acceleration/ Fast Draft, which adds another display step. Ergo simply switching everything to software-only rendering modes might have the same effect as dsoes selecting something. Evaluating the expression is slower than any benefits you gain from GPU display functions, anyway.

Mylenium

[Martin Matthias]

Ah, that sounds logical.

Where can those settings be found?

[Mylenium]

Check the preferences and the various flyout menus in the top right corners of the comp viewer, preview panel and so on.

Mylenium

[Martin Matthias]

Thank you Mylenium! I fiddled around with all the settings in the preferences, project settings and various flyout menus (CUDA on/off, adaptive resolution, preview preferences, render options, ...), but it doesn't make a difference. I still have to select a path to gain that performance boost. It's strange.
Is there Adobe staff around, that could give an insight in this behaviour?

[Martin Matthias]

Okay, it has nothing to do with the rendering. Even if the timeline is rendered (green indicator) the scrubbing is still choppy, as long as no path is selected. So I assume it is a UI display problem.

I tried the Hardware Acceleration settings in Preferences-->Display, but that also did not change anything.

Are there more hidden settings like this?