Files
effectcraft/docs/hardware-parity.md
vangel76andClaude Opus 5.5 e7ada5bd16 #486: move a panel into its own native window (multiple monitors)
Problem: floating panels lived inside the main window only, so on a
two-screen setup no panel could go onto the second monitor (#486).

Fix: panel menu > Move Panel to New Window (and the agent/control command
`window.panelWindow {panel, window?}`) undocks the panel if needed and shows
its floating group in a native egui viewport the user can drag to any screen;
Move Panel to Main Window or closing the window brings it back. The window's
place and size are kept in the workspace (sanitised against hostile values)
and restored on the next start. Browser and test builds, which embed
viewports, show it as an in-app window.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-11 13:10:12 +02:00

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Hardware parity

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (first hardware parity document, from the code and open issues against After Effects 2026 26.5) · Target: Adobe After Effects 2026

Each piece of hardware After Effects uses, per platform, against EffectCraft. Ours comes from the code at origin/main 1446e27 (crates/gpu, crates/render, crates/ui-egui) and the issue tracker; After Effects' from its documentation (Mercury GPU Acceleration, Multi-Frame Rendering, hardware-accelerated decode and encode, Mercury Transmit) and its bundle.

Overall ≈ 40% (estimated). The GPU compositor and 280 GPU effects are a real strength and run in the browser too; hardware video decode and encode, video-out devices, tablets and multiple monitors are missing, and two GPU start-up failures are open.

Feature After Effects 2026 EffectCraft macOS Windows Linux Web Notes / evidence
GPU compositing and effects Mercury GPU (Metal; CUDA / OpenCL / DirectX on Windows) yes, Metal via wgpu Vulkan yes; Direct3D 12 fails (FXC can't compile the pointwise kernel, #613) Vulkan WebGPU, in frame workers 280 of 306 effects on the GPU, checked against the CPU renderer; Fractal and the analysis/tool effects stay on the CPU (effects-parity.md)
CPU fallback and device-loss recovery yes yes yes; Windows ARM64 Adreno panics after device loss (#591) yes yes (#225 fixed) Out of video memory falls back to the CPU (#106)
GPU detection and choice GPU info, renderer choice Backend Auto per comp "GPU isn't being detected" (#596); Intel HD 5500 fix unverified (#198) yes yes No settings page listing adapters yet
Multi-core rendering Multi-Frame Rendering rayon pools; preview scheduler sized to the render pool same same Web Workers, one engine per worker No benchmark against Multi-Frame Rendering
Hardware video decode H.264 / HEVC / ProRes (Apple silicon) none (software, FilmCraft) none none none FilmCraft has VideoToolbox, Media Foundation/DXVA and VA-API paths to borrow (gap 15)
Hardware video encode H.264 / HEVC via VideoToolbox, NVENC, Quick Sync (render queue and Media Encoder) none none none none #498 asks for NVENC; our software encoders are slower and lack B-frames
Video output devices Mercury Transmit to AJA, Blackmagic, second display second preview window only (Video Preview) same same — No SDI/HDMI device output
HDR display HDR monitoring on EDR / HDR displays tone-mapped SDR view; no EDR output no HDR output no no Colour engine handles HDR maths (Rec. 2100 PQ/HLG output files)
Pen tablets (pressure, tilt) yes, for Paint and Roto Brushes panel has pressure options, but no tablet pressure is read same same same Paint strokes store pressure per vertex; input never fills it
Multiple monitors panels and windows across screens panels move into their own native windows on any screen (Move Panel to New Window; desktop builds) same same (#486) — gap 20
Touch / trackpad gestures pinch zoom in viewers egui pointer and scroll; no pinch-to-zoom audited — — — —
Audio hardware Core Audio / ASIO / WASAPI, device choice, latency cpal output; preview sound late on Linux (#554) and after a start offset (#504) cpal cpal (ALSA) Web Audio No input or device latency settings
Machine learning acceleration Apple Neural Engine / GPU for Object Matte, Roto Brush 3 CPU inference (pure Rust, rayon) CPU CPU CPU No GPU inference for MobileSAM or MediaPipe
Memory management RAM reserve, disk cache RAM Reserved, Reduce Cache When Low on Memory, disk cache same same OPFS disk cache good

Estimate

≈ 60–120 h: Direct3D 12 and adapter start-up fixes 6–12 h; hardware decode on three platforms 20–35 h and encode 15–30 h (borrowing FilmCraft's work); multiple monitors 10–20 h; tablet pressure 4–8 h; HDR output 8–15 h. Needs Windows and Linux GPUs we don't have locally, and a human for the Adreno and Intel cases.

Revision history

Date Change Summary
2026-10-10 major First hardware parity document