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Gio25998476wqd5
Participant
October 6, 2023
Question

After effects error cached preview needs 2 or more frames to playback

  • October 6, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 802 views

Hi. Today I opened After Effects 2020 to make a video but, after I imported the first video and tried to play it with no further modifications, this error popped up: after effects error cached preview needs 2 or more frames to playback.

I already tried every solution I could find on the Internet but none worked. I tried to delete and purge the cache, to make sure the timeline was on the full length of the composition, to turn off and on both after effects and the pc, to make the composition a little longer and to pass from 'full' to 'quarter'.

Sometimes it would play until a certain length just to start looping and then giving the same error.

I also noticed that this occurs with all my projects (so it's not a problem of the single file) and it occurs only with videos but runs alright with pictures.

I'm using a Mac with 4 GBs of RAMS, and 2,5 GBs are for after effects (It doesn't let me put more). I know it's not a lot but it has never given me this kind of problems, especially since I used it just this morning and it was okay. Somebody has ideas?

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1 reply

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 6, 2023

For clarification, your Mac has 4GB of RAM?

It is an older Intel based MacBook Air?

The minimum requirement is 16GB.  

I've run After Effects 2020 on my 11-inch 2015 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and while it worked, it was very slow.

 

Are you able to install and run After Effects on something that meets the minimum system requirements?

 

 

G
Gio25998476wqd5Author
Participant
October 6, 2023

Yeah, I got it in 2015 and don't have anything else to install AE on.

It just kinda pisses me off because it happened suddenly.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 11, 2023

Try transcoding the source clip to ProRes.  You can do this in the Finder by right-clicking and then choosing Encode Selected Video Files (it might be in a sub-menu depending on which version of macOS that you are running).  When the options appear, choose ProRes.  The file will be large.  1080p30 comes in at about 1GB per minute.  Depending on the duration of the video file, it may take awhile to transcode as well.

Restart, make sure that as few other applications are running as possible.  It might also be worth quitting Creative Cloud Desktop.  After Effects should still launch, but nothing will sync (namely fonts and Libraries).

 

Then try to import the ProRes clip into a new After Effects project.

 

 

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