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What on Earth is with the new "initializing GPU" process that keeps showing up whenever there is even a minor OS installation on my Mac? It sometimes takes ten minutes while the window slowly crawls to 100%, with a "Please stand by for playback." I could see waiting for this if After Effects was suddenly blazingly fast, but it seems to be the same old sluggish After Effects, just with a long wait to begin working.
By @Woodhouse
What's happening in the background is that whenever there's an OS update, or a display driver update, and often when there's an application update for AE/PrPro, we need to compile the kernels for the system's rendering architecture (Metal, Cuda, OpenCL). This *can* take seconds or minutes depending on the environmental variables, and on the nature of the project you're trying to open. This need to compile the kernels isn't new, but the progress dialog is new. We heard from a lot of users who didn't understand why their "first launch" experience was lacking certain rendering or playback functionality, so we put in a dialog to give the users some feedback about what was happening in the background.
This process is supposed to only happen on first launch after an update to the app, drivers, or OS. It *is* possible to delete these compute caches and trigger the process all over again, but most users don't do that, because they're at 'hidden' locations. I'd like to better understand what you're doing when you say you "[clear] your cache ahead of new projects." Also, could you share your system configuration with me? With internal testing, we often have a difficult time getting the dialog to appear on Mac, because the Metal compute kernels tend to compile very quickly. Also, if you could tell me a little more about the complexity and size of projects you're opening when you are bothered by this dialog, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to replicate your experience in house if possible.
Finally, the dialog should be dismissable. You won't see the progress bar, and any functionality supplied by kernels not-yet-compiled will still be offline until the kernels compile, but you can otherwise interact with the product. I hope this reply helps clarify what's happening.
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