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Some stuff is as fast as before, like scrubbing and playing and applying a tween.
But other, simple stuff, like selecting frames, adding frames - regular or key - takes 2-5 seconds each. Really anything with the timeline is slow. This happens especially with long movies (1.5 minutes - 2500 frames). Which shouldn't matter. I had movies 5 minutes long working fine.
Anyone else experience this yet?
I'm interested in this, am about to upgrade to CS4 on the Mac.
What spec is your machine, is it Intel or PowerPC?
I'm using one of the new iMac 24" and would be disappointed if it ran slow like you describe.
Looking forward to moving on from Flash CS3, as it's been the most crash tastic version release I've used.
I am experiencing the same slowness. I have an animation that is around 4k frames and I get the "thinking beach ball" every time I try to do ANYTHING (like clicking on the screen)! I'm honestly shocked how slow it is. In fact as I am writing this Flash has been using 99% of my processor for about 30 seconds because I clicked on a symbol in my movie... It seems each release is slower the the last! I have a Macbook Pro with 3GB of memory and 2.33mhz processor. I have tested it and Flash MX 2004 ran faster on XP in Fusion vs. my Mac.
Oh... and when you zoom in it STILL doesn't zoom to the center of the viewing area. Does Adobe actually care what it's customers think?!
I have a perfectly adequate Macbook Pro 2.33ghz with 2gigs of memory. Flash 8 wasn't this slow under Rosetta.
I agree. I think CS3 on the Mac is slow compared to XP, now this. I wonder if they even tested it on a Mac. How disappointing.
It's also frustrating that all the reviewers don't even test the software, they just regurgitate Adobe's marketing.
Yeouch! Thanks for the warning.
I haven't used Flash CS4 yet, but I'm seriously considering getting the PC version, and using Boot Camp or Fusions instead of getting the Mac version.
If anyone has a Mac licence for CS4, if you contact Adobe support, you can transfer the license over to PC...
It's really a shame because I prefer using OSX to XP/Vista... Has anyone tested the performance of Flash CS4 with Fusion?
BTW Mark, I love your website :D
But, is this a Mac only problem? Any Windows users with more than 2000 frames in their movies want to chime in? Or has anyone used it in parallels/vmware/bootcamp? Because I'm really curious to see if this is just an overall problem, possibly with the new way to render stuff in the authoring environment.
I know Chris Georgene has been putting CS4 through the works as a beta tester, and is writing a book on animating in Flash CS4. He uses the PC version, and hasn't mentioned anything about it running slow.
CS4 is probably a bit slower than CS3 on the PC, but not as slow as you're describing. It wouldn't be the first time Adobe has delivered an inferior product for Mac users.
I'm waiting for the demos to come out, and will test it on the PC and Mac (on the same system) and find out which runs smoother.
I'll put some numbers to the slowness. Using OS X 10.5.5 I opened up a file in Flash CS4 that I have been working on in CS3 and the file takes 70 seconds to open. Then when I try and double click to edit my main movieclip — which has about 4k frames — it takes about 20 seconds to edit. In CS3 the same files takes 2 seconds to open and less than a second to edit any movieclip.
I sent a support email to Adobe this morning. I'll let you know what they say.
BD, that's my experience. And I'm finding now that its not just a large amount of frames thing. I can have a single frame movie and if there's a lot of info on screen I get the same slowdowns. It seems CS4 cannot handle any type of normal use without crawling to a near halt. This is including drawing with the pen tool. I think I may be skipping CS4 the same way I skipped MX 2004 when they dropped object level undo (which almost seems to be phasing out again in this version with its new and incomprehensible incompatibilities with IK and the spray brush.
It's true, reviewers shouldn't just talk up new features, they should talk about how the overall software works.
True belivers the gentlemen above speak the truth Flash CS4 is by far the best of the versions in alot of aspects but is by far the most unstable release I have seen from Adobe yet you can start to notice slowdowns after adding more then 20 assets into your project and pardon my languege Admins of this site but that is **** I am a flash developer and have projects with hundreds of assets and when opening them in CS4 it comes to a screaming halt with times of 30 and more seconds to go into movie clips and god help you if you wanna make big changes to these files. Adobe has screwed us bad with Flash CS4 and is not responding to our cries for help so if your reading this DO NOT BUY or UPGRADE to Flash CS4 and this is coming from an adobe freak.
They best fix this scam soon or I for one who paid for this CRAP will drop them like a ton of bricks.
tetsuo, are you using the Mac or PC version?
Also, are you talking about editing a CS3 document in CS4.
Have you re-created a similarly complex project in CS4 from scratch, is it just as slow then? I'm wondering if it's a migration issue, or that CS4 is just slow in general. It's funny, but I posted a similar thread in Kirupa and not many of them are complaining about speed, but I guess most of them do everything in code...
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=311761
I returned my copy yesterday. Then I finally got a response from support and they recommended the following:
Recreate preferences of CS4 ::
Flash CS4 on OS X
1. Quit Flash CS4
2. Navigate to Users:USER:Library:application support:adobe:Flash CS4:en
3. Rename the Configuration Folder to “Configuration old”.
4. Navigate to Users:USER:Library:preferences:
5. Trash the "Flash CS4 preferences" file.
Or to try a different CS3 file (did that), or reinstall Flash CS4 and directed me to this link: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb405535
I didn't try to recreate preferences or reinstall because I honestly don't have time to beta test for Adobe.
Guys it is both Versions MAC and PC alike, it happens with CS4 files to and not only CS3, I tried my friends PC version and it happened just the same it's not the computers its Flash what a F**king rip off dude.
Damn, it sounds like by adding these new animation features they've made Flash so slow that it's not well suited to doing animation anymore... pretty ironic really. Probably doesn't affect website designers and coders much, but they're not the ones who would get the most use out of the new animation features.
Hopefully they release an optimization update, otherwise a lot of people will be sticking with Flash 8 and CS3 for animation.
I was so looking forward to CS4 because of all the new animation features...
Well, I thought the slowdown was annoying to begin with, but now it's too much. I am going back to cs3.
The worst part for me is that when I hit enter to view my animation the lip sync is not synced. I have to publish every time I wanna see any changes. Lol. And this release was supposed to be for animators. What a joke.
Ghalgaryth, what's your setup?
It's frustrating, because there's not much of an alternative for us other than stick with CS3/Flash8. Maybe in a few years after we upgrade our computers they'll be fast enough. lol.
Please Adobe, keep Flash as a platform useful for more than just RIA.
I am running Production Premium on a PC with win XP.
Dual core 2.8ghz, 2.8ghz
3 GB of RAM
Radeon x1600 512MB video card
I am leaning towards returning the whole creative suite now. I am way over the system requirements so I feel like a system upgrade would be a waste of money...it might still be slow. Although....dare I say it....maybe Vista might be the answer.
Everyone with the problems has a good enough computer man it's the software that’s bad, I tried it on my vista computer and it still lags like a snail in a horse race.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghalgaryth
Adobe has not acknowledged that there is anything wrong with the release and when you call support they are on the phone with you trouble shooting and bull****ing you half to death with no noticeable results. Flash CS4 is nothing but an incomplete beta version of what would have been a great program
and should have never been released as it is today.
Adobe owes the Flash user community a BIG PUBLIC APOLOGY for letting the clowns at the flash labs do this.
Wow this is seriously disappointing me. I had a quick go on Flash cs4 on a vista 64-bit machine. It seemed ok to me, but I immediately thought that the new animation method is going to be way too slow to be productive with.
Great thing about the classic tween is that its really quick to use I suppose, I'm really interested on hearing peoples thoughts on the new motion editor and tween method.
i was hoping to convince my boss to move to CS4, then tried Flash CS4... what a dissapointment, things like select and deselect take a long time and is stupid that simple things like those take so long, something i could have done in 10 minutes, it has taken me over 30, it's a shame :/
(BTW, i'm in a PC and it surpasses the CS4 requirements)
Goodbye Flash CS4 Trial, i'm staying with CS3
Hi everyone,
Late to the party, I know. My entire team of 40+ artists and developers just upgraded to the CS4 suite. We are unfortunately regretting it. We have a mix of professional workstations running XP with mostly quad cores less than two years old. Flash CS4 is almost unusable. Constant crashing, NO SUPPORT FOR WORKING OVER A LAN (which was news to me after working with Flash for 5 years) http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/d9bbd9d4.html, mysterious font issues and many other miscellaneous issues, and EXTREME slowness. Unfortunate, as I have been a heavy advocate for Flash in that past, and have spend those 5 years learning all about its intricacies. We work with tens of thousands of FLAs in a tight production environment and we just need a tool that works. Flash CS4 is not adequate, sorry to pile on. If you don't have a specific need to use Flash, I would recommend avoiding this release in lieu of alternatives.
I also find is very suspicious that no links to any Adobe sites are showing up in Google while I'm researching this very serious issue. I have to wonder if they're actively trying to suppress complaints. C'mon Adobe, the Flash platform was becoming increasingly difficult for me to justify to my management, this debacle isn't helping.
I just upgraded to a 2.93 Core2Duo with 4 gig of DDR3 Ram and a 7200rpm HD and, while performance is better, some stuff is insanely slow on CS4 that was manageable on my 2.33ghz 2gig machine under CS3. That is uber sad.
Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents for anyone thinking about upgrading from CS3, Id SERIOUSLY advise you not to. If you are on any type of time constraint
this is one to stay away from. It has some cool new features but they are not worth the trade off unless you want to work slower than working in CS3.
I ended loosing a client because of how slow the project was taking because of the "Spinning wheel" I kept getting and I had to start another project over in CS3.
I even tried the latest update. I really just dont have time to "try" different solutions when the work needs to get done. I am using a Mac Dual 2.0 G5 with 5 gigs of ram, which I would assume should be able to handle it.
Ill be sticking with CS3 from now on no matter what. BTW adobe, an update isnt supposed to slow you down guys. Better luck next version.
Yeah I just made the change from PC to Mac about 2 months ago and did a platform change and upgraded to CS4 and it is slow as christmas on to much. But Im hanging in there since I'm sure it will be resolved.
cs4 was slow on my xp laptop....
its pretty decent for my desktop workhorse. quad phenom 3 ghz with 4 gigz of ram / ati card.
Haven't tried CS4 myself and don't plan to after what i've read.Quote:
Originally Posted by debofly
What galls me is this. Adobe (and some other companies) have created whole industries around these applications: Flash, AE, PS, Premiere, Word, etc. etc. Every year or so, they release a "new" version with one or two new features that they actually thought of years ago but deliberately withheld so they'd have an excuse to release future versions ad infinitum (i.e. to milk everybody for more cash). Pretty soon we'll be running Flash XS 9 (really ver. 23) and Photoshop XS9 (really ver. 41). It's absurd. Like many things including people, software peaks, then starts to decline. Obviously CS4 is past that point.
I'm still using Flash 5, which as we all know was the big jump (from v. 4). I've tried MX, 8, CS3. Yah, they have a few goodies, but man, is Flash 5 ever fast on a newer machine. And i do mean faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast!! Have fun with CS4 though.
I am running Flash CS4 on a MacBook Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.6 GHz, 4GB ram, 800 MHZ buss speed.
AKA - one sweet machine!
Flash CS4 seemed to be running fine. But I am working on a large multi page web site with lots of text. Original page was created in Flash CS3. and components are imported from Illustrator CS4. It is so painfully slow. I'm not animating anything in the time line, it's all done in action script. The only thing in the time line are the pages, navigation points to a different frame for each page.
It's so darn slow that even clicking on a primitive square and trying to move it takes 2-4 seconds. Clicking on text is equally painful.
I'm going to try rebuilding my site from scratch in CS4 - without starting from a CS3 file.
Flash also seemed to be hurting after importing large text blocks from Illustrator.
Make sure that you use the CS4 updater - there have been a ton of performance issues fixed:
http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html
List of bugs fixed here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/rgalvan/2009/...available.html
I was running Flash 10.0.0
I updated to Flash 10.0.2
And it is running MUCH better
Thanks!
I have the same machine as kellyimaging, I also work on CS3 files originally created on a XP system, and I also updated to 10.0.2.
Still slow as a donkey.
If you can share your file(s), or provide steps from scratch to reproduce consistently, we can look at what the problem is and try to fix it. We'll also need to know all details about the computer system (RAM, cores, OS version, etc) so we can find a similar system to run the file on. There are many variables and often whatever is causing the slow down is extremely specific.
Thanks,
Jen
Flash team
Hello, this sounds promising. I am running Flash CS4 Professional, now v10.0.2 on a MacBook Pro with 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM. My MAC OS X version is 10.5.7.
Another perhaps useful piece of information is that the project runs smooth (as expected) when run via a browser (Firefox), but runs slow when testing the site locally. There are too many files to send over email or this channel, but the project may be viewed on www.tickertarot.com (again; runs smoothly).
Any help appreciated and thanks for making an effort.
I have found that ALL cs4 apps on my mac are slow. when AE loads as fast as illustrator we have a problem. It should not take 4 gigs of RAM to run illustrator.
Also, the shape tweeing playback in cs4 seems verry bogged down. maybe i will take a video and post what i am experiencing.
Flash CS4 is slow as death on all my PC's.
I can't even open the components panel or it crashes.:confused:
I have been using CS4 on my new iMac 27", which is a strong computer, and it absolutely bogs down like its nobody's business for larger movies. To echo other posts, just panning through the timeline, right-clicking a frame, anything really, yields a good 10 second wait. And don't even try selecting multiple frames at once!
As I noted above:
Make sure that you use the CS4 updater - there have been a ton of performance issues fixed:
http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html
------- And (if that doesn't fix it) -----------
If you can share your file(s), or provide steps from scratch to reproduce consistently, we can look at what the problem is and try to fix it. We'll also need to know all details about the computer system (RAM, cores, OS version, etc) so we can find a similar system to run the file on. There are many variables and often whatever is causing the slow down is extremely specific.
Thanks,