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abbyyss
Known Participant
June 15, 2023
Question

After Effects Interface

  • June 15, 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 1233 views

Hi there! My name's Emma, and for the past two or so months my After Effects app has been messed up badly. I cannot interact with the interface like at all, (Can't left click, interact with drop boxes, etc)

 

I'm an editor, and utilised After Effects as my editing app, so it's very unfortunate I can't use it. If anybody can help, please do.

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 17, 2023

After Effects is not a video editing app, it never was designed to edit movies. AE is a visual effects, compositing, animation, and motion graphics app designed to create shots or make transitions you cannot make in an NLE like Premiere Pro. Most of your comps should be a single comp, at the most, a single short scene. The timeline should not have cuts in it. Every time you make a cut, make a new composition. Most of my comps are under 7 seconds because most shots in a movie are less than seven seconds long. I render the effects and then edit in Premiere Pro, where the audio mixing and color correction tools are much better. That is what all the major studios do no matter what kind of software they use to create effects, composites, and motion graphics. 

 

Slowdowns can come from having the Media and Disk cache set to a huge value so it takes a long time to purge and robs the system of resources. Mine is set to 40GB, which is plenty for a 4K comp previewed with the comp resolution set to Auto and the Magnification ration set to 50%. You should also check the  Memory and Performance section and set the RAM available to other applications to an even multiple of 4 (that's 4, 8, 12) because the data pipeline for most modern applications can be that wide, and sharing the pipeline between apps slows things down.

 

Let us know if any of these suggestions work. 

 

 

B
bretonb80955479
Participating Frequently
June 16, 2023

Sometimes switching workspaces fixes these kind of issues:

You can change to any workspace, and then change right back (recommend saving first as this can also crash AE)


Ishan Y
Community Manager
Ishan YCommunity Manager
Community Manager
June 16, 2023

Hi Emma,

I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing this issue. I have moved this thread to the Discussions section to investigate and troubleshoot. Could you share your system specifications (OS, OS version, CPU, GPU, RAM) and After Effects version (Help > About After Effects)? Are you using any tablets or controllers? We're here to help. Just need some more info.

 

Thanks,

Ishan

A
abbyyssAuthor
Known Participant
June 27, 2023

Hi! Sorry for the late reply, I completely forgot about my posting on this topic. Also solutions I have already tried are: switching workspaces, resetting preferences, re-opening After Effects, re-installing After Effects, and so on. I've even uninstalled all of my plugins but still have issues. Hopefully the information below can help out! Also, I don't use a controller or tablet.

 

My After Effects version is 22.0

 

I'm on a Windows laptop, here is my laptop information on settings:
Device name DESKTOP-PJGNG7U
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 4500U with Radeon Graphics 2.38 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.39 GB usable)
Device ID F20A2CE0-CE6C-47EE-A549-89895B0C55A4
Product ID 00325-81951-68075-AAOEM
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch Pen and touch support with 10 touch points

Ishan Y
Community Manager
Ishan YCommunity Manager
Community Manager
June 28, 2023

Thanks for sharing the details. Is there any specific reason you're using an older After Effects version? Do you also see this issue with After Effects 23.5? Could you share a screen recording with us? A recording of the problem can help us better understand the issue. 

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
June 16, 2023

Without any system info and a screenshot we realyl can't tell you anything. Start by resetting the workspace and/ or deleting the relevant prefs and configuration files externally so they get rebuilt with defaults. Anything more will require proper info.

 

Mylenium

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