After Effects

Hi everyone,I’m having an issue with HAP codec playback in After Effects on macOS and I’m hoping someone here has a solution.I’m working on a Mac with Apple Silicon (M4 Pro), and I can’t get any HAP-encoded videos to preview or play correctly inside After Effects. I’ve already installed the HAP codec application, but After Effects still won’t reproduce the files.Has anyone managed to get HAP working properly in After Effects on Apple Silicon Macs?Is there any workaround, specific setting, or recommended workflow?Any help or experience would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance!

I've always loved this TV show and put some time into learning how the VFX teams working on the 1990s sci-fi show created the effects.   I used After Effects for all the explainer sections and hope you might enjoy learning about their inventiveness.

I want to animate a list of words going down a curved path, but I need the full words to stay horizontal so you can still read them. Is there a way to do this? I've tried using a null object path but that locks all the words in the formation it is in the text box, and I want each word to still follow the curve of the path. Basically, I want the text to move on a path how it would if you turned off "perpendicular to path", but instead of having one letter per row, I want one/two word(s) per row. Hopefully that makes sense.

In After Effects I want to have text slide right and disappear behind an object without reappearing on the opposite side of the object. I can get it along with the text/shape box slide behind the object. No problem. But it reappears on the opposite side of the object. I want the text/shape box to collapse against the right side of the object box as it disappears behind the object. How can I anchor or get the right side of the text/shape box to hold in place without having to add multiple key points to stop the right side from move too far? Do I need to write expressions to get the right side to hold position?

My question is: How can I align a filmstrip composition to a predefined path?I have a composition which consists of two movie reels turning, and another one of a filmstrip moving down vertically. My intention is now to align the filmstrip along a predefined path between the two reels, to make it look as if it comes out of one reel and loops into the second reel. The common practice to copy the mask path and paste it into the position properties of the filmstrip composition would not align it along the path, it rather keeps the whole composition steady and moves it from one vertex point to the next.Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Hello,I noticed that the "Properties" panel causes a significant slowdown when I want to manipulate keyframes with my Keystone extension. I tested with other third-party tools to verify that this was not due to the Keystone code, and the results are identical.I recorded a demo where I run a stagger on 750 keyframes, and you can see that when the Properties panel is displayed, it takes three times longer to calculate the requested stagger than when it is not displayed:Properties panel OFF -> 04:36Properties panel ON -> 14:93As can be seen in the video, it is worth noting that there is no need to completely close the panel to gain performance.

Here's the problem: I have a few hundred shape layers in my comp, animated and ready to go BUT... Now I need to replace all of them with a precomp. I can't just [option]+drag (on Mac) the precomp on them because AE nags something about the layer not having a source (being a shape layer). Actually this is weird because even shape layers have the basic transforms and shouldn't that be enough for replacement? So anyway, is there any way I can drag+drop replace these shape layers?? Or a plugin, script, anything? If not, seems like this is a missing feature.

Hi! I have a scene where I did a camera track on some footage. Then I added a 3D object, a shadow catcher plane, and an environment light. Everything works fine as long as the footage layer stays visible. But when I turn off the visibility of the footage (I need the video to be transparent for another comp), the shadow starts randomly disappearing on different frames.I’m using Advanced 3D. This also happens in other comps with other objects, sometimes instead of disappearing, the shadows get distorted or flip orientation. I don’t have any keyframes on the light or anything like that.Any tips or workarounds would be super appreciated. Thanks! 

 So, I was trying to add the materials from a 3D model I found. How do I add these matereals to after effects, so it can process that it is a material mesh? I already attempted to add the textures to the timeline, but to no avail. I've looked everywhere, but since it's still so new there aren't any tutorials on it yet. The file that I'm using is a .FBX file.

Looks like a bug from 2021 has returned.After Effects 25.6, Win11, my PC specs don't matter.This button in the title does nothing. I checked it in a couple of projects with different media.

Hello dear AE users,I am creating a fake developer's typing. My text comes from Dreamweaver and it has the correct fill colors (some words are gray, other orange etc. like in the image)I copy it from DW and paste it in AE and colors are still correct.I apply Typewriter Console to simulate the writing, and text fill colors change in white.I've noticed that if I get rid of the expression in Text>Source text, the original fill colors come back.What should I do? is there a line I can add to the expression to mantain the colors?thanks a lotLorenzo 

Hello, I am building plugins that use gpu. Side note, on windows i am using dx12 (via cuda/CL for textures transfer). Can you carify/confirm my understanding please:1/ Does AE sdk support dx12 ? (for now i am handling the dx resources).2/ Is the PF_Cmd_GPU_DEVICE_SETUP call done when the plugin is first applied or is it called per plugin instance ?3/ Probably related to the previous question: the gpu_data that is retrieved from PF_SmartRenderExtra is per instance or global to the plugin ?4/ In case the previous answer were "global to the plugin", where is the best place to strore gpu resources per instance ? I can think of sequence data but, because the later might be created more than once per plugin instance, it is not practical.5/ Finally, if i want to use gpu in the ui thread (processing arb, for example), how can i make sure that gpu has been setup (we dont get the gpu setup call during ui thread) and where to store the gpu resources to make them accessible during ui thr

Dear experts, please help me...I’m working on a 25fps project. There’s a main comp (~1 min) and a shorter comp (10 frames). The shorter comp is exactly 10 frames long. Each frame shows a different vector graphic number: frame 0 → number 0 … frame 9 → number 9.This comp with the numbers is duplicated 3 times in the main comp: num_01, num_02, and num_03. I would like to control the numbers inside these comps using 3 sliders on the control_01 layer: sl_01, sl_02, and sl_03. For this, I enabled time remapping on the num comps.I’m not an expert in scripting, but this is the simplest expression I found:f = thisComp.layer("control_01").effect("sl_01")("Slider") t = f * thisComp.frameDuration; valueAtTime(t);It works…until I try to set the slider to 6 or above. From 0–5 it shows the correct number, but 6 shows 5, 7 → 6, 8 → 7, 9 → 8, 10 → 9.after 25 seconds, num_01 and num_02 change 1 frame earlier than the slider’s keyframes (while num_03 changes at the correct time).I’m really trying to unde

Hi there, we’ve replaced our file server and the UNC path has changed.  The mapped drive is still the same but it appears that the After Effects Project files reference the UNC path, which no longer exists and therefore takes a very long time to load as the paths time out.  Is there a way to force After Effects to ignore the linked media files and request a relink immediately?Some assets are still linking to the old UNC path which stops the project from oppening or crashes when you do get into the project.

I'm extremely new to Aftereffects and I have Toggle Mask and Shape Path Visibity toggled but It still doesn't show the Circle icon when my mouse is on the comp. I'm on Mac btw.

Hello!I am an After Effects newbie and I have the following issue: I am editing a big project in premiere pro and I want to apply some speed ramps to a couple of the clips. Therefore I checked a tutorial and followed all the steps: I imported the clips into AE and created a composition with time remapping to do the speed ramp. It all works out really well, the slo-mo looks nice, the sound is great. But when I export the clips and re-import them into Premiere, the footage looks notably different, somehow it plays back differently, like the frame rate or the frame processing is now different I have tried a few things:- I changed the color engine to REC- turned off motion blur and frame interpolation- double checked the framerate  The footage is: 15.3 Mb/s 1920*1080 at 25 fps, AVCExport is set for: H264, best quality 1920*1080 at 25fps, frame interpolation off, half-frame rendering off, motion-blur off. I have spent a couple of hours trying to find a sol

hi guys,I have a problem from mocha.I am drawing a plot with the tool in the video and doing tracking at the end, but after 10 seconds it stops and the remaining timeline turns red and I cannot continue it in any way. The track remains red. How can I solve this?

Hi, I have a project in AE that crashes with the message: "After Effects can't continue: damaged item 26:16,"  and I have to stop the AE process in Task Manager.  However if I just save the project and Exit AE, it does not crash and I can open the project again.  I have tried starting in Safe Mode, purging the cache, disabling plugins etc, but nothing seems to work.  I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling AE.  Any advice will be greatly apreciated.Zaffer

Just someday ago i cannot even use the dynamic link feature, now it keeps crashing when opening my files.  

I’m experiencing a severe performance issue with After Effects 2025 on Windows:as soon as I open the program, RAM and Disk usage instantly jump to 100%, even with an empty project.This happens with:No project loadedA blank projectOnly one empty compositionClean installation of AENo plugins installed (fresh install)The program becomes unusable and the entire system slows down heavily.1. Main symptoms RAM → 95–100% usage immediatelyAfter Effects alone consumes nearly all of my 32 GB RAMEven without any project, layers, effects, or mediaWindows becomes slow after opening AE Disk → 80–100% usageDisk usage spikes to the maximumStops only after killing Adobe background processes, but RAM remains maxed outAfter Effects sometimes locks the NVMe at constant high read/write usage (70–100 MB/s)2. Adobe background processes involvedThese processes reopen automatically even after being closed:Adobe Dynamic Link Manager 2025Adobe TeamProjectsLocalHub 2025Creative Cloud Interprocess Service (32-bit)H

I’ve been working full‑time in After Effects for years, and recently a client who runs a Korean movies website: https://tvmon.com.co/ asked us to create a branded homepage video.The project itself was straightforward: a logo reveal, bilingual type, and a dynamic grid of thumbnails. But during editing I ran into one of the strangest technical issues I’ve seen in a while. The animation looked perfect inside AE’s preview and even rendered fine through the internal Render Queue, but the moment I sent it to Adobe Media Encoder with multi‑frame rendering enabled, random flickers and one‑frame freezes started appearing in the grid comp. What makes it maddening is that the problem isn’t consistent—different frames glitch on each render, and sometimes the flicker is subtle, sometimes it’s obvious. I suspected collapsed transformations combined with time‑remap and expressions using valueAtTime were clashing with AME’s evaluation order, but even after baking keyframes, disabling Posteri