After Effects preview keeps rebuilding the cache instead of playing smoothly

Forum|Forum|26 days ago
September 10, 2026
3 replies
54 views

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue with preview playback in After Effects. The composition starts caching normally, but when I play it back, the preview still stutters and some of the cached frames seem to be rendered again instead of playing smoothly.

I’ve already tried lowering the preview resolution and clearing the cache, but the behavior is still there. The composition is not particularly complex either.

Is there a Preview or cache setting I should check that could be causing After Effects to rebuild frames during playback?
I found this related discussion about cached frames being re-rendered during Preview.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Hi, @Lavish_Havenb983:

If system resources are insufficient to play a Preview from start to finish, After Effects will favor caching the range closest to the Current Time Indicator.

Try lowering the Magnification to Quarter and set the Skip option in the Preview panel to 1 or 2. This should alllow for longer Preview durations to cache. Also set the Work Area over the time range you're currently working with so that the Preview includes just that duration.

- Warren