Drop of performance on MacOS since SDK 51+

[mattdaboy]

Hello everyone !

Since last year, I’ve been using SDK 50.2.4.4 (stable and high‑performing) for our Opendo Animateur app (https://www.opendo.fr/solutions).
Last week, I decided to upgrade to the latest SDK, 51.2.2.
I immediately noticed a performance hit in rendering—a drop of about 40–50%. What was once a super‑smooth interface now stutters (whether displaying videos, images, animations or item lists).
I’m developing the app on macOS with IntelliJ and compiling from the command line using Visual Studio Code, so my tests are on macOS (15.5, MacBook M1 Pro).
On Windows, there’s no performance degradation between the two SDKs.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

[chrslgr]

i had problems with ELS with air 51, so sticked to 50. do you use ELS in your app?

[mattdaboy]

encryptedLocalStorage ? No I don't use it

[ajwfrost]

Are you able to use Adobe Scout to look at the performance to see if there's any hint there as to what may have changed (rendering vs AS3 vs GC etc..?)

Looking at your app, we can see the initial animation screen, and although visually it looks fine, the Scout traces look a little different on the more recent SDKs, with a patch of activity at the start and end of the animation where rasterisation is taking longer.. (seems to be a difference between 50.2.5.1 and 51.0.1.1 i.e. the 51.0 branch updates may have caused an issue here..?)

We can have a look to see what rasterisation difference there may be between those versions, although it's not an area we tend to touch!!

thanks

[mattdaboy]

Hi Andrew,
I just discovered Adobe Scout : fantastic tool !
So I made 2 tests with adl (directly from IntelliJ) : SDK 50.2.4.4 vs SDK 51.2.2.1, and I can see a reel difference in images duration, memory usage and CPU as well.
Here are the 2 records from Scout.
Does it give you good hints on what can cause this drop of perf ?
Archive.zip

[ajwfrost]

Thanks .. so the main changes I can see there:

• bulk of the 'rasterizing edges' has gone from around 10ms to 16ms and varies a bit more
• an underlying 1ms on 'decoding media from network' jumped up to vary around 4-8ms
• the last bit of the animation goes from around 22ms to around 45ms for rasterization

How is your animation actually being created? I'd thought it was a video but it doesn't appear to be? I don't suppose it's possible to extract that and just provide a SWF that does this one piece (or better still, some sample source code for it, if that can be isolated/generalised)?

thanks

[mattdaboy]

The jingle is a video file.
But the drop of performance is note exclusive to the jingle. This drop can be seen after the jingle in the whole interface.
Here are 2 videoshots where you can see the difference of fluidity of the app. I out a tiny framerate widget on top left and as you can see with the 50.x, the framrate stays nearly 60 all along, contrary to 51.x

• https://absolugranit.fr/dl/OpendoAnimSDK50.2.4.4.mp4
• https://absolugranit.fr/dl/OpendoAnimSDK51.2.2.1.mp4

[ajwfrost]

Hi - are you able to try using AIR SDK 51.2.2.2 and then dropping the below AIR runtime onto it? Or just update your app with this runtime itself directly? And then see if the rendering performance has improved...
https://transfer.harman.com/message/X7BtfFP15s52e3d2RdZDkL

thanks

[ajwfrost]

Hi @mattdaboy - just wondering if you'd found that the above update has improved things? The change that we backed out here was something introduced in order to support the external rendering of content, but I think we can make that change specific to only impact elements that have been set up with the external (ANE-based) render... but it would be good to know if this improves things, ideally back to the original performance level from 50.2!

thanks

[mattdaboy]

Hey Andrew, I will try this tonight (I am out of the office for holydays). Best regards. Matthieu Le 7 août 2025 à 12:18, Andrew Frost ***@***.***> a écrit :  Hi @mattdaboy<https://github.com/mattdaboy> - just wondering if you'd found that the above update has improved things? The change that we backed out here was something introduced in order to support the external rendering of content, but I think we can make that change specific to only impact elements that have been set up with the external (ANE-based) render... but it would be good to know if this improves things, ideally back to the original performance level from 50.2! thanks

[ajwfrost]

Okay thanks!

[mattdaboy]

Hello Andrew, When I try to package the app (bundle), I have this error with the SDK 51.2.2.2 and the framework perftest (folder Adobe AIR.framework) you gave to me : unexpected failure: Platform conversion failed. Process exited with error 1. Output was "" java.io.IOException: Platform conversion failed. Process exited with error 1. Output was "" at com.adobe.air.nai.AppBundlePackager.conversionFail(AppBundlePackager.java) at com.adobe.air.nai.NativePackager.invokePlatformConversion(NativePackager.java) at com.adobe.air.nai.NativePackager.createPackage(NativePackager.java) at com.adobe.air.nai.AppBundlePackager.createPackage(AppBundlePackager.java) at com.adobe.air.ADT.parseArgsAndGo(ADT.java) at com.adobe.air.ADT.run(ADT.java) at com.adobe.air.ADT.main(ADT.java) [Opendo.fr]<https://www.opendo.fr> Matthieu Corbex Product Manager Associé

[ajwfrost]

Hmm... possibly a signing issue? it might be easier if we build the SDK properly and drop you the bundle I guess...
Apologies for that!

[ajwfrost]

Can you try downloading this full SDK zip file please, and see if it helps, when you get a chance?
https://transfer.harman.com/message/3uviVttjQF6MU20E9bfmN7

thanks

[mattdaboy]

Hi Andrew, This works pretty well ! I can even see some performance upgrade since the 50.2.4.4, like 10 or 15% quicker. Thank you for your support and quick answers, it's always greatly appreciated ! Regards. [Opendo.fr]<https://www.opendo.fr> Matthieu Corbex

[ajwfrost]

Great, thanks for the quick feedback! We'll get this integrated into our next release then..