2025.2.0 build 131 locks up old comps

Thanks for reporting back, and I'm glad you got it solved!

Yeah, if the "Reduce Noise" plug-ing you're referring to happens to be Neat Video, then yeah, it's heavy but produces incredible results. Sometimes it's best to pre-render clips with your noise reduction (in an intermediate format like ProRes), then import them back in to your comp. This can drastically improve performance and reduce render times since you won't constantly be recalculating noise reduction.

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team

Hi there @John Karner,

Are you able to share the project with us? Given that it might be large with all the assets, it might be easiest to start diagnosing the problem on your end by reducing the comp until playback starts working. So a few questions:

1. If you set preview to start at different point in the comp, does the freeze still happen, or does it only happen from the beginnign of the comp? If so...
2. Can you start by deleting all layers that don't appear under the Current Time Indicator and seeing if the freeze occurs? 
3. You can then start to delete larger chunks to see if playback works properly, and then eventually indentify if a specific asset, layer, effect, expression etc. is the problem.

Thanks,

- David, After Effects Engineering Team