I'm tracking footage as I write this. the entire file is just a single 4k video with two trackers. my cache is on an ssd, and I run a 1070 and 6700k intel chip. not the best, I know...
bit it worked fine on 6k anamorphic video in 2016 when I made it. so now I get to say:
what the hell adobe. how did you mess this up so much, the moment you went subscription?

it's simple. after effects has become like 3DS max: buggy, cobbled together, filled with half-functional plugins, all with messy code and badly integrated, with no guide to keep the UI functional or intuitive. All the bulk makes it hard to update, hard to run, hard to work with, and hard to debug.

We're aware Adobe doesn't care about artists. They care about bad managers who think addons are a replacement for actual workflows, or that bells and whistles improve the quality of work above a mastery of the basics. The result of this, is that every update comes with new plugins.

We're going on 500 plugins now... and it's beyond silly at this point, as I use maybe a total of 5 to 10 in all of my workflows combined.

also, the "cross applications workflow tools" suck. they're far less effective than just throwing a pen drive across the office. These aren't small files. syncing them would take hours my dudes. even just from program to program is slow, clunky, and unreliable to the extreme. get it together, adobe.

I tracked 29 frames in that time. now I just minimize and maximize all my windows... and it speeds up 1200%. seriously. if I didn't know the workarounds I would be at breaking down the doors of their offices right now for selling this at absolutely eyebrow-singing prices.

After Effects finally needs a competitive 3D Realtime Engine (GPU) for 3D compositing and virtual workflows of the future. The Link to Cinema is too slow, complicated and unstable for simple 3D compositing tasks. So it needs something like "3D Elements" on steroids and native in AE.

Dranging some 3D Assets into AE, add some effects, tweak and light them, is a must have in 2022. Compositing, Motion Graphics and VFX are not only 2D/2,5D! - they happen now also in 3D and Realtime!

What this new real time 3D Engine needs:
- 3D Geometry Support (import/export)
- PBR Shaders
- Link to Substance Painter/Designer
- Primitives' and very basics modeling (box, spline) and deformer Tools
- Raytrace Lighting, Reflections (GPU)
- Support of 3D Volumes and Point Clouds (vdb.)
- Camera Mapping Tools
- Advanced Camera Tracker (more manuell control, constrains, import/export)
- Smart 3D Particles with Physics (node editor)
- VR HMD Support

thx

PS: I wirte this since years. please don't delete my requests again.

Renders fail when attempting to export ProRes 4444 alpha that would otherwise not occur on Intel based macs.

Issue causes the following prompt:

"""

After Effects error: Rendering error will writing to file "...." Compressor format error. (-1610153454).

Followed by:

After Effects error: An unexpected error occured while exporting a composition. Error Code: 9988

Please restart After Effects and retry the export.

""""

Anecdotally, this is occurring on about 80% of comps I try to render. Most frequently on more complex comps with blurs and variations in the opacity levels.

Please fix this quickly, otherwise this effectively causes AE on M1 to be unusable in production/professional environments.

M1 Max AE v22 as of 2/2022

The new extended viewer is a great addition to the program, nice being able to see outside of the viewer frame! It would be amazing if this was an option for a 2D workflow, there's definite benefits for being able to have vision of what's outside the frame

A workaround for those who like this as well, you can create a simple 3D layer and hide it. It will allow you to still use the draft 3D mode to have the extended view enabled for your 2D layers. Not sure what impact it would have on performance though having 3D enabled!

For After Effects and Premiere Pro users, we provide a graphic and animation pack, which is used by more than 3000 customers.

After your last updates, our customers began reporting that they were receiving the unstoppable zero denominator error message when trying to use our library. We have tried to find the source of the problem, but it continues to appear randomly with no logical explanation. As I can see some other users have reported this bug related to Time Remap.

Here is a sample project file that gives the error.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9WJGP5JsrmULsGRTIxxxRWbdRUG6bVF/view?usp=sharing

This bug makes our product unusable to users and as a consequence will make our company suffer a substantial financial loss. There is nothing we can do on our side in order to fix the bug. So we request that the bug be fixed as soon as possible.

I have a workstation- it is not a beast.
I was working with several layers of 6k anamorphic footage in 2016 without buffering.

fast forward to 2022. I can barely mask 1080p footage without making coffee while it buffers for 3 minutes.

the solution? just... make a new one. invest maybe a few million of those 15.79 billion in profits last year to making new, performant, decent software.

I'm not disparaging adobe for making money or being profitable. I'm unhappy because adobe is running a service, and the implication of providing a service is that said service is provided.

https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html this page lists a number of features provided with the service. half of them are simply not true, others are debatable at best.

so, yes! I believe adobe after effects is now a scam. I wish it weren't true, but I've been using the same computer since 2017, and I can tell you- performance has gotten worse, workflows have gotten obfuscated and slow, new features are either unusable or worthless, the program does not play well with other programs, and multiframe rendering provides nearly no functional difference to performance.

If there has been any improvement in speed over the last 7 years, it's due to hardware improvements alone, as my hardware has barely changed, and I have never once seen a speed improvement since CS4. (and I have been using adobe products since CS2)

I no longer use after effects, except to access old reels from 2020 or prior.

FIX IT, ADOBE.

...man, after effects and premiere used to be fun to use. They were a joy. now they're infuriating, tedious, and useless.

Menu bar and all right click dropdowns are not working in AE 2022. You click an item in the menu bar and nothing appears, you click again and it shows up for a moment but disappears when you move your mouse over to click on a drop down item.

When you click for the first time, you can click on drop down items by guessing the approximate location of where they are but they are invisible so it's a guessing game.

This makes AE completely unusable. Fixes when you delete your preferences file but it is not feasible to delete all my workspace preferences every time this bug comes up, and it always comes back.

This video from another user with the same issue shows the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6kHnkX-3BQ&feature=youtu.be

How about a new type of Repeater for shape groups that looks pretty much the same as the existing one, except that values in it's Transform properties are not applied cumulatively, but rather have their expressions evaluated individually for every copy of the shape?

So if I add a random expression to the repeater's Position property, I get a bunch of randomly positioned copies. Ideally we'd get expression access to something like repeaterIndex (like textIndex in text layer expression selectors) but even without any new syntax it would be amazing. I can already imagine making a growing vine which automatically sprouts leaves as it gets longer.

Might save someone jumping over to Cavalry, and could provide some new possibilities to MGRTs too.