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
46 comments
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Robert Eggleston
commented
You know what's the worst? The TYPING.
Can't even type in text layers without it skipping characters or requiring me to add extra spaces and then delete them for my recently typed text to 'refresh'.
This is happening to me on a maxed out Macbook Pro 16" and a Windows 10 machine with an i7 7700k, 32GB ram and a GTX1080 using an NVME SSD and a Samsung SSD for working files.
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Mary Taylor
commented
I don't know what's happened with the updates as of late, but now both After Effects & Premiere are like working in molasses. I had to go back a few versions for it to get to working like normal again.
Update: I don't think that worked either. I am now thinking it is trying to make MOGRTS with expressions that may be slowing it down to a halt as the day goes on. But I don't think I'm using complicated expressions, so I don't understand.
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Thomas Heising
commented
Working with shape layers and 3D is so embarrassingly slow. I am currently moving text around in a simple 3D space, and it is so slow. I have turned down the preview quality, there is not lighting nor shaders and it is still enormously cumbersome just moving and scaling elements.
As the original post says: please cease developing new superfluous features and make After Effects production-friendly.
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Nuno Ferreira
commented
When I look 10 years back I do see a great evolution in terms of tools and features.
Unfortunately, the software has stagnated in terms of performance and the time to produce simple content has practically no gains in terms of software efficiency and only gains from the additional investment in more powerful hardware on the part of users.
This wouldn't be such a problem if users didn't have to pay so much money for monthly subscriptions. -
Chris Phillips
commented
+1. Every time new Nvidia drivers or a new After Effects version comes out I load it up to see if it's fixed and am always disappointed. I actually bought this PC to replace my Mac machine, but I wound up having to keep my older Mac because AE is so laggy to be unusable on PC. I think it's a high PPI issue on PC, but my Mac is high PPI as well and that is buttery. I find it incredibly hard to believe that they are not aware of this.
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Brett Howe
commented
Hi all.
I found this issue upon upgrade...and fixed it.
Firstly I updated to the latest Video Card drivers. No change.
I then explored plugin issues. Again, no change.
As I had just updated using creative cloud, and it pulled my settings across from previous version, I figured maybe this was the issue. Something old holding things back.
So in Preferences, Media & Disk Cache I hit CLEAR DATABASE & CACHE in the CONFORMED MEDIA section.
It crashed AE. :|
I re-opened it and did it again. After an eternity, it finished...and bam! No more lag.
I can't guarantee this is the problem for all, but it fixed things for me.
Cheers
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Berislav Curić
commented
I have 2 workstations, on one aftereffects works PERFECTLY, on other one it's terrible. And I can't figure out the difference!!!!
But these are two completely different workstations, in every aspect.
we are missing the key information, it's something that affects the UI, something small. Let's find out what it is.
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David Bixler
commented
If you think it's a slag now, just wait. They just added Substance to their catalog of products to ignore.
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John Myers commented
Thank goodness we're paying so much monthly so we can watch nothing happen on almost every single request in here. If you check out the Premiere uservoice and sort by TOP you see their team at least has the decency to respond to the highest voted items. Unfortunately no amount of poking or prodding via social media or direct contact matters, Adobe always cuts/pastes "We'll check in with that team and hopefully fix that!"
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Andrew Hoag
commented
It's honestly mind-boggling how every release seems to add some features I have no interest in, but always breaks core functionality.
I have regularly crashing CEP panels. Change workspaces? 15 seconds of locked AE windows, hoping a crash isn't imminent. Impossible to know what causes the issue, and that randomness of performance is even more concerning/frustrating.
Resizing the main app window or panel is a nightmare right now. Often times I can't select multiple text layers and choose a different font family from the Character panel without AE completely locking up.
For whatever it's worth: Windows 10 (20H2), AE Version 18.2.1 (Build 8). Ryzen 5950X with 64GB of RAM, two discrete GPUs (3080 and 3070).
Here I am, at the end of another big client project having done the work - and the only thing holding delivery is another bug-ridden Adobe program.
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spencer snygg
commented
I'm doing a rotoscope now. The RAM, CPU and GPU are practically not used (like maybe 30%) but *** is taking an hour for each frame. It started the process almost real time, but by the time it got 5 seconds in, it started slowing way down and is getting worse. Ideas?
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Eddy Klaus
commented
I have the exact same problem. Laggy interface with shape layers. I work in cinema 4D with no problem at all, also in big scene files. But After Effects is so laggy as if im working on windows 95. Years and Years of monthly subscription and this is what we get. The experience with after effects is so frustrating sometimes. I used to love my job man, common.
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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