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Learn How To Edit Stuff
Participant
October 21, 2025

Playhead doesn't move in linked comps from Premiere to After Effects

  • October 21, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 65 views

Hey team,

 

This has been bugging me for a long time - when you right click in premiere > make after effects composition, the playhead inside of that comp will eventually stop moving. It might not be on the first playback, or the third, but after swapping back to premiere and back to AE a few times, eventually the playhead just ceases to exist. The only way to fix it is to shut down After Effects and reopen the project again, but then as soon as you link another comp from premiere to AE, it happens again and then you need to shut down and restart again.

 

Quite annoying, hopefully this gives you enough information to reproduce it!

 

AE version 25.5

Windows 11 OS

 

- Learn How to Edit Stuff

3 replies

travisb99585726
travisb99585726
Participant
November 6, 2025

I have the same issue. Clearing cache doesn't work. I can temporarily fix it by resetting preferences, but the playhead always disappears eventually in linked comps. It's too bad because the speed of iterating with linked comps is why I use Premiere + After Effects.

 

12th Gen Core 19-12900K

64GB RAM

Geforce 3070 Ti on the latest studio driver.

L
Learn How To Edit StuffAuthor
Participant
October 22, 2025

Hey Nishu,

 

I have tried that already - it happens in every project. I think it might have something to do with the AE comp updating in Premiere, and the bouncing back and forth between the applications breaks it at some point. Are you able to reproduce?

Add some text or color matte layers on your timeline in premiere, then make it an AE comp, then do some work in ae and swap back and forth playing both timelines.

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
October 24, 2025

I spent some time trying to reproduce it but the playhead works fine at my end in both appa. What are your system specifications (CPU, GPU, RAM)? Is your GPU driver updated? If you're using an Nvidia GPU, install the latest Studio Driver from the Nvidia website.

Let me know how it goes.


Thanks,
Nishu

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
October 22, 2025

That's not ideal.

 

Does it happen in all the projects? Try running After Effects in Safe Mode with third-party plug-ins disabled. Also, try clearing media cache (Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache).

Let me know how it goes.


Thanks,
Nishu

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