Interface is Slow and Laggy
Dear Adobe,
Me again.
Please stop everything that you're doing with the development of new bells and whistles and doodads and put all your resources and firepower into resolving the years-old issue of the Slow and Laggy Interface in After Effects. Seriously. It's been YEARS. I kept thinking, "ah, they'll fix it soon.." and hope for the best and I end up feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football every time a new update for After Effects comes out. "Maybe they fixed it!" And it's still not fixed.
When I contact Support I'm told, "the issue that you are facing is a known issue and the same has been highlighted to the designated team who are working on getting the issue fixed in the future releases," but it has yet to be fixed.
Old After Effects was FASTER on OLDER laptops - I have been on modern workstation-build DESKTOPS that are slower in response. Makes me not want to work in After Effects. I feel bad for those starting out in motion graphics in 2020 and this is what they are introduced to.
SpaceX put two astronauts on the space station. Surely we can get a butter smooth interface in After Effects.
Thank you.
Marc Trzepla
shared this idea
34 comments
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Richard Veljkovic
commented
It lags even on empty composition with nothing but text in it. 2K monitor here and i had zero of these issues in previous version of AE.
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Blasko Arsov
commented
I have the same problem here. I'm working on Asus 4k monitor MG28U and it's very laggy with After Effects.
Can someone tell me if this problem occurs on 2K monitor as well ? Because I'm planning to buy a new one. -
Livio Di Miceli
commented
the whole interface in the windows version is full of lag and glitch even when you do a resize of the windows!!we pay for a continuous subscription every month for several years and I think we deserve optimized software!
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Brian Hayes
commented
Couldn't agree more !!!... and while you are at it, stop changing things that don't need changed like key commands that have been standard for years. I feel like you just do these things to mess with us... If you want to do something productive give us a faster render engine... No one would complain about that. ... I don't need bells or whistles .... I need to be able to work faster.
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Luiz Amoasei
commented
The focus os Adobe isent better performance, instead, the super engineers are turning the AE into a wagon, full of effects and things that nobody really wants, like the coreldraw.
A big and fat APP, which consumes resources and moves like an old turtle :-( -
Nick Wood
commented
For me AE currently stalls frequently, often taking whatever key was pressed at the time for a ride. Undo? Try hammering through 30 undo steps in a single go. Delete? Half my layers go down the pan. Prefs deleted, same. Hardware acceleration toggled, same.
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Ignatz Johnson Higham
commented
So many issues with the UI. My current fav is that the red play head disappears when previewing. No idea what causes it. Tried updating this and that, I suspect it has something to do with dynamic link and Premiere, but who knows. The only fix seems to be restarting AE. This is a fundamental aspect of the program - time based key framing, if you can't get the core functionality to work then what's the point in anything else. Please, no new features until it is stable and solid.
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Martin Klöckener
commented
Hey AE Staff!
It seems like the UI could potentially be fast. As soon as a path/mask is selected, AE seems to switch to another rendering mode that uses the GPU. Maybe it's possible to just always use this rendering mode to always have that performance boost?
Here you can clearly see the difference:
https://youtu.be/bTU2LCRo4dw
https://youtu.be/ZIQYO0ek3U0 -
Lasse Gjertsen
commented
So long Adobe...
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Lasse Gjertsen
commented
@Warren Definitely not a display driver issue. UI is laggy until I select a random path from one of the shape layers in the timeline. Then I can scrub the timeline and pan/tilt the composition window more or less smoothly. Goes from ≈3 fps to ≈15 fps.
I guess the UI responsiveness depends on what type of layers and effects used. I built a character rig with multiple shape layers with expressions for inverted kinetics and links to properties on other layers. A lot of expressions, indeed, but I used an even more advanced rig many years ago and AE was not this unresponsive; on a PC ten times slower than my current workstation.
I'm starting to wonder if the AE team have coded themselves into a corner; for AE to be backwards-compatible when importing older project files and etc. I kind of feel sorry for them, but they really need to sort this out.
AE isn't even utilizing CPU and GPU properly. Foreground auto-saving disrupting workflow. Always having to rely on scripts and expressions for basic functions. Still unable to copy/paste keyframes from multiple layers without duplicating the layers. I could go on for hours.
Luckily my yearly subscription runs out in a few days. I'm not paying for this anymore.
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Warren Heaton
commented
Why does this sound entirely like a display driver issue?
I've seen better performance on each newer machine on my end since, well Cosa After Effects 1.5. I typically upgrade machines every five to eight years.
The ability to continue to work in the Timeline while a Preview is running in recent versions? Amazing.
And the Comps range from light weight to 512 layers.
So, take a serious look at drivers.
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the dudes
commented
YES!
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Antonio Fernandes
commented
Hace dos meses, tenia un i7 antiguo con 26 GB y discos sata.
Y hacia cosas con el AEAhora tengo un Ryzen 7 3800x 128 GB y un M2 pcie de 1TB para los programas
Y AE está muy difícil de trabajar a gusto...El ratón tiene fluidez CERO
Intente con la versión 2020 y lo mismo.
Una desilusión total...Four months ago, I had an old i7 with 26GB and sata drives.
And I did things with the AENow I have a Ryzen 7 3800x 128GB and a 1TB M2 pcie for the programs
And AE is very difficult to work at ease ...Mouse has ZERO fluency
Try the 2020 version and the same.
A total disappointment ... -
SomeGreek commented
I'm genuinely near to tears with After Effects now. They have no interest in fixing things because we keep coming back - all they care about are the flashy bells and whistles that make a good promo video to hook in new users... and none of these features ever work - content aware fill, anyone? It's insane how messy AE is these days
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Paweł Truchan
commented
Agree 100% ... its lagish as s**t
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Stéphane Augé
commented
I totally agree. Please Adobe, stop adding marketing features.
CC 2014 was working perflectly and then Adobe changed the code of the interface and since then the interface is going wrong.
The Ram preview is super buggy. It drop frames, it has audio problems, the green bar behaviour is totally eractic. The character panel is buggy too, the list menu is laggy, etc. etc. etc...
All this wasn't there before.
CC 2014 was working perfectly. Please revert back the interface (espacially the Ram preview part) to what it was in CC 2014. -
Greg Jacobs
commented
I've noticed is that certain typefaces obliterate AE performance.
Raleway is a typeface I've used for various client projects - so when working on an animation, I tried to use the apt brand typeface. I made a new project for a dynamic text animation and put in the first bit of text and changed it to Raleway. Then, I animated it. Preview was worthless. Basic animation of a single word of text was painfully unresponsive.
I assumed that it was because I hadn't updated AE. I updated to the latest. Opened the project. No fix. I uninstalled and installed a version I knew was at one point more stable. I checked all the drivers, updated everything, came here, shook my fist once again at Adobe devs/leadership, etc. I tried everything I could think of, and AE was still an unusable piece of software - moving 1 word of type, it would lock up.
Then, realizing I just had to grit my teeth and work through it, I started a project from scratch and tried animating using the default typeface... and had zero performance issues.
I tried changing the text to some other typefaces, adding more text, animating it in the way I had on previous projects - and performance was acceptable. Adobe stuff is often not great. But everything was working as it had on previous projects.
I changed the text to Raleway... and discovered that - at least for me - that was the common factor for my horrible preview/performance issues. I'm not sure why a typeface which is legally installed would cause an issue. It's still terrible on Adobe's end that any typeface would cause issues.
Odd thing: Raleway was mysteriously uninstalled on my system a while back. I had to re-activate it via typekit and re-install it.
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Seb James
commented
I came on here today to try and submit a bug report as the interface and usability in this latest version of AE is shockingly slow and unresponsive. I'm trying to do some fairly simple mograph with type and shapes and the RAM preview sometimes doesn't even respond - so I have to restart the program - multiple times a day. Pressing Numpad "." to preview audio doesn't work half the time, and when it does the timeline indicator doesn't move so I've no idea where I am in the timeline. It takes SO LONG to just move along and up and down in the timeline sometimes.
I swear 99% of my stress at work is caused by Adobe software being slow and just **** at the simplest of tasks, it's so frustrating.
Adobe, sort it out!!
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Nuno Ferreira
commented
I totally agree that Adobe is doing a lousy job concerning the performance of the applications.
I don’t understand how it is possible that all applications seem to get slower and slower with faster processors and GPUs.
I know I can’t compare directly but, how is it possible to have 3D games running 1080 or 4K with all special effects at 100+ frames a second and one simple animation in after effects with motion blur gets so slow to preview and render?????
Unreal Engine also has been showing mind blowing improvements. Adobe is stuck concerning speed!Indesign and illustrator suffer from the same problem.
ADOBE I am looking for alternatives!
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Lasse Gjertsen
commented
I'm doing character animation with Shape Layers on two 4K screens. Simply viewing many keyframes makes the whole program lag, especially when zooming in and out on the timeline. Selecting many keyframes increases the lag exponentially.
BUT when selecting only one keyframe/one path (still viewing all keyframes) the lag magically disappears and I can scrub the timeline more or less smoothly. What the hell is going on here?
The timeline also starts lagging when viewing the Waveform of a single Audio clip/layer.
Adobe, please fix these basic performance issues/BUGS before adding more 3D-features and etc. My workflow is seriously impaired because of this. If I could switch to another software I would do so instantly, but I'm stuck with this animation style midway in a 3 year project. Could as well have done this hand drawn, it would probably go faster...
Working in a 1-3 fps User Interface because the software struggles with viewing dots on a screen on a high end workstation in 2021 is completely unacceptable, ridiculous and extremely frustrating. Come on!
