Why is Flash so slow?

[londonweb]

Wasn't sure where to post this one, but here goes: I've just bought a new 15" pb (yes it does have lines but that's another thread)- I bought it partly because my ibook G3 was so slow I was beginning to lose the will to live when working on it, so was looking forward to the extra power.

Most of my apps work lovely and very zippy on the new pb, except Flash. I'm running MX 2004, and virtually everything I click on brings up the spinny coloured thing and I get a delay of 2-5 seconds before anything happens. I get it when clicking keyframes, when importing a image, when adding motion tween, when changing a font, when deleting a frame...you get the idea. I can't understand why it's doing this- surely it can't be lack of memory? It's got the stock 512mb, which seems ample for everything else (quark, photoshop, illustrator etc.) Even my dinosaur of a pc works fine with Flash, and in the past I've always found it to be quite an efficient program.

I do have over 1000 fonts installed, which I haven't got round to organising yet...could that have an effect?

Any ideas?

 

[killmoms]

I do have over 1000 fonts installed, which I haven't got round to organising yet...could that have an effect?

Any ideas?

That's entirely likely. If you have that many fonts, I'd recommend using a font management utility like Extensis Suitcase to keep them organized but keep most deactivated unless you need them.

However, I've never worked with Flash MX 2004 so I can't say I can give you any specific advice about why you might be experiencing these kinds of slowdowns.

 

[radiantm3]

All macromedia apps are slow and laggy on the mac. That's why I try not to use them unless I have to.

Use FontExplorerX for a font manager. Probably the best font manager out on the mac and it's free. Suitcase is horrible.

 

[londonweb]

All macromedia apps are slow and laggy on the mac. That's why I try not to use them unless I have to.

Dreamweaver is ok, although not great- it seems ridiculous to me that it runs quicker on my ancient pentium 3 pc! Hopefully when Adobe buy Macromedia things will be different.

Would a memory upgrade help?

 

[radiantm3]

Dreamweaver is ok, although not great- it seems ridiculous to me that it runs quicker on my ancient pentium 3 pc! Hopefully when Adobe buy Macromedia things will be different.

Would a memory upgrade help?

Dreamweaver is unusable on the mac for me. Way too slow.

The first thing I would do in your situation is get all those fonts out of your system. It's very unnecessary to load that many fonts at once. Launching apps must take forever.

 

[munkle]

More memory would definitely help, failing that make sure other apps are closed when you're using Flash.

Also make sure you have the latest Flash updates installed.

 

[decksnap]

All macromedia apps are slow and laggy on the mac. That's why I try not to use them unless I have to.

Use FontExplorerX for a font manager. Probably the best font manager out on the mac and it's free. Suitcase is horrible.

Hold on now. That's your opinion. Suitcase hasn't given me any trouble and I highly recommend it.

Also, 'All macromedia apps are slow and laggy' is highly subjective. What the OP is describing is not the same kind of lag you might feel normally in a Macromedia app. They can be buggy at times, but are nowhere near as slow as the OP is experiencing. My guess is it's a font issue.

 

[radiantm3]

Hold on now. That's your opinion. Suitcase hasn't given me any trouble and I highly recommend it.

I used suitcase for about 6 years. It really hasn't changed much at all in those 6 years. Still the same archaic program. Good riddance.

Give FontExplorerX a try and you won't be wasting money on an overpriced and feature-less font manager. It does everything that suitcase does (plus a whole lot more), it's less buggy, faster, and looks amazing. Did I mention it's free?

Also, 'All macromedia apps are slow and laggy' is highly subjective. What the OP is describing is not the same kind of lag you might feel normally in a Macromedia app. They can be buggy at times, but are nowhere near as slow as the OP is experiencing. My guess is it's a font issue.

It's not subjective. All of the macromedia apps are almost 2x as fast on the PC. And the interface for macromedia apps look like they were taken from windows and made to look like a mac application. The original poster is comparing flash on his slow PC to flash on the mac. One of the reasons is exactly what I am talking about.

 

[londonweb]

Tell you what guys- I'll sort out my fonts this evening and try again, and I'll let you know how it behaves then.

 

[iGav]

Give FontExplorerX a try and you won't be wasting money on an overpriced and feature-less font manager. It does everything that suitcase does (plus a whole lot more), it's less buggy, faster, and looks amazing. Did I mention it's free?

I was the first one on these boards to wax rhapsodic about FontExplorer X, that is until I loaded up 9 and half thousands fonts into it and it made my system nearly unusable by making me endure hundreds of error messages when I was opening up an app, because of the way it cannot handle possibly iffy/damaged fonts effectively.

Personally I've never had a problem with Suitcase, certainly never when it comes to handling serious amounts of fonts, but also never with regards to it's functionality and speed, always been near bullet for me, much like ATM Deluxe was back in the day.

I'll try FontExplorer X again when I get round to wiping my system and once I've sorted, organised and repaired any damage fonts, but at the moment I don't trust FontExplorer when a deadline is imminent.

 

[radiantm3]

I was the first one on these boards to wax rhapsodic about FontExplorer X, that is until I loaded up 9 and half thousands fonts into it and it made my system nearly unusable by making me endure hundreds of error messages when I was opening up an app, because of the way it cannot handle possibly iffy/damaged fonts effectively.

Personally I've never had a problem with Suitcase, certainly never when it comes to handling serious amounts of fonts, but also never with regards to it's functionality and speed, always been near bullet for me, much like ATM Deluxe was back in the day.

I'll try FontExplorer X again when I get round to wiping my system and once I've sorted, organised and repaired any damage fonts, but at the moment I don't trust FontExplorer when a deadline is imminent.

Are that many fonts even necessary? I loaded up about 2000 fonts when I first installed it and it imported them without any issues. There has also been about 2 updates since it was first released so some of your issues might have been resolved. I've been using it for months now and haven't had a single issue. All my apps seem to be auto-activating fonts as I need them just fine.

I've always hated suitcase with a passion. I only stuck with it because it was the only manager available on windows and it's all I really knew when I moved to the mac platform. When suitcase broke with 10.4 (it did when 10.4 was first released), I switched to FontAgent Pro which was a lot better than suitcase and now FontExplorerX. Going back to suitcase would be like going back to OS9 or even windows from X.

 

[decksnap]

If you have to ask why 9,000 fonts are necessary, maybe suitcase isn't for you.

'How laggy' and 'how slow' IS a pretty subjective concept. I know they are slower on a Mac, just not as slow as the OP is experiencing.

 

[radiantm3]

If you have to ask why 9,000 fonts are necessary, maybe suitcase isn't for you.

'How laggy' and 'how slow' IS a pretty subjective concept. I know they are slower on a Mac, just not as slow as the OP is experiencing.

It was a joke. However, out of my 2000 fonts, I only use about 30-40 regularly (not including system fonts). So loading 9000 seems a bit too much for me especially considering you said half of them needed to be repaired.

 

[londonweb]

Tell you what guys- I'll sort out my fonts this evening and try again, and I'll let you know how it behaves then.

Ok, just disabled most of the fonts on my system just leaving the common ones, and Flash is a lot, lot better. Happy days...

 

[whooleytoo]

Supposedly the latest version of Flash provides a significant improvement in speed on the Mac:

MacOSX Hints

 

[neut]

Glad you were able to fix your font issue; though, MX 2004 is a big pile of ****. Studio 8 works wonderful under Tiger. Regaurdless of which one your using ... have fun with the new security model.


peace | neut

 

[iGav]

So loading 9000 seems a bit too much for me especially considering you said half of them needed to be repaired.

Having that many typefaces is more of a convenience for me, as a freelancer whom frequently works client side or on location it can sometimes be difficult to get hold of typefaces. Having access to so many typefaces is basically a safety net. even then, I know people with 10-15 times as many as me so in some respects I don't have that many at all.

Regarding damaged fonts, I've found Suitcase to handle them infinitely better than FontExplorer X, I was aware of only a handful of dodgy fonts in Suitcase, such is it's ability to repair and use damaged fonts on the fly without having to alert the using everytime, FontExplorer X I found really struggled in the same situation. Not that Suitcase is perfect of course, far from it... but for me it's been as bulletproof as can be expected.

That said, because of my FontExplorer X experience, I've just started going through all my fonts, basically organising them, sorting and sifty and I will then repair them with FontDoctor just incase there are infact problems with my them and not just FontExplorer being over zealous.

Now that said, I know that it's still beta software, and as a MASSIVE fan of Linotype/Heidelberg products I know that they'll sort the problems, and it'll be by far and away the best app on the market, it's just that I can't beta test software on commerical projects because it's massively unprofessional if something goes wrong and it shafts the client and their deadlines, and that was the position FontExplorer X put me in.

 

[heaven]

Supposedly the latest version of Flash provides a significant improvement in speed on the Mac:

MacOSX Hints

Thats true! After updating mine it started working like a dream!