Switching between tabs is slow

[orangefizz]

I've been copy/pasting between Affinity Photo 2 Beta tabs and noticed considerable lag after clicking a tab. These are small documents. I don't know if this is a memory/caching issue but obviously the aim would be for nimble tab-switching. I previously had larger documents open in the same session, but since closed to test this.

[orangefizz]

That is not good to hear. I'm honestly not gonna bother posting here if it becomes another issue graveyard. Tab-switching is a high priority issue.

[Jon P]

Apologies if threads sometimes get missed, we are keeping an eye on this forum and responding to most threads, sometimes they may have to be prioritized due to the amount of people reporting an issue/if it's easily reproduced, but we do aim to get around to everything.

A couple of us have tried this on different machines and can't reproduce a 4 second delay with some medium/large size documents.

Out of curiosity, is this slow down on new blank documents too, or does the slowdown scale with the size/amount of the documents you have open? If so could you let us know what system specs you are using?

Can I also confirm if this is a change in behavior in 2.0.4?

[orangefizz]

You have to work on a document for a long time (alert: history) before you'll see this. I tested this out, first by adding a new doc with other existing ones open. Lag. Then I closed all documents, created two blank ones. Lag. Closed AP2 and re-opened, created one empty doc and opened an image in another tab, no lag.

Seems it's not flushing the data/history/whatever cache when documents are closed but, more importantly, that it's causing lag with open documents in multiple tabs.

[orangefizz]

Did you restart before making this screen recording? Once the lag starts it doesn't stop, even for new empty docs, until you restart the app.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

39 minutes ago, anto said:

If you have two documents open with 20-30 pages each, it's impossible to work between them.

As I understand this is affecting Windows only, but, just for fun I loaded two different PDF with around 150 pages each (with both text graphics and photos - two manuals about Korg synthesizers).

Everything is smooth as hell switching tabs, copy & paste between the documents…

Macbook Pro 16” M1…

It seems that Windows platform is more buggy for Serif compared to Mac…

[orangefizz]

1 hour ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

As I understand this is affecting Windows only

I'm on a Mac and the files I was editing were tiny. However, the *other* files I previously had open were larger. It didn't resolve until I relaunched the app.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

1 minute ago, anto said:

So the problem still exists in MacOS

Not for me…

My Publisher have been opened since release, without restart, and, no restart of the OS either…

Have worked alot in Publisher with large documents and haven’t notice what you showed/writed above…

[orangefizz]

I should clarify that my original post on this issue is related to Affinity Photo, not Publisher.

[Komatös]

Hi @antoand @orangefizz

I know the problem since V2.0.4. It concerns, with me, not only the tabs but also the change with e.g. the brush categories.

Remedy created with me only the deactivation of the hardware acceleration.

@AffinityMakesMeSmile

Devices with iOS/macOS use hardware acceleration on defined hardware, which significantly reduces the error rate, in Windows/Linux there are so many combinations of hardware that only nuances are enough to bring drivers and programs out of sync.

 

[Chris B]

4x documents open, each with 300+ pages full of dense text and I see a delay of about 1-2 seconds. With a few blank documents open the switch is instantaneous. This is on a low to mid range laptop with an RTX 3050 Ti and an 11-gen i7. 

[Chris B]

I'm not trying to dispute what's going on in the video. If anything, I am agreeing in that with lots of content, there is definitely a delay. I imagine when the documents have embedded docs and imagery, this delay could increase further. 

[Chris B]

https://www.dropbox.com/request/G0GF4KldYT1ydZLqCBTg

[Chris B]

Your document is a bit slower than the ones I created. Perhaps 3 seconds to switch to it. So again, I agree there is something here and it is worth a submission to the developers. 

[orangefizz]

1 hour ago, Chris B said:

I'm not trying to dispute what's going on in the video. If anything, I am agreeing in that with lots of content, there is definitely a delay. I imagine when the documents have embedded docs and imagery, this delay could increase further. 

It's not just the size/complexity of *open* documents, but even after those documents have been closed the effect lingers until you actually restart the app. That's a problem.

I'll try the suggestion to disable hardware acceleration, though that seems like an odd thing to do, given the issue.

[Chris B]

That looks pretty bad. 

Can you please check Task Manager on Windows to see if it's eating CPU/RAM/VRAM etc and attach a screenshot. 

[Chris B]

I can log this but I need to know if it's a regression over Retail 2.0.4 - can you confirm? I'm only asking you because you seem to be able to easily reproduce this with a substantially long delay when switching. For me, it's nowhere near as much of an issue. If we can determine if 2.0.4 is affected or not it may help the developers narrow down where a change was made which may have caused this.

[Chris B]

Who said it wasn't a problem? I was trying to figure out if it is a regression. 

Please do not misconstrue our intentions to pass back bug reports to the developers. We just need as many details as possible.

This issue is now logged as we managed to reproduce with a 500 page document. We were also seeing upwards of 3 or 4 seconds between switching docs. Just to make you aware, we are QA and we have little to no influence over what the developers fix.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Considerable delay when switching tabs" (REF: AFB-7647) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.2.0.1985".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.