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Tigermovs47
Tigermovs47
Participant
August 28, 2026

In After Effects 2026 no matter what the quality of preview is the playback is twice as slow as the rendered video.

  • August 28, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 45 views

I created a fairly simple composition featuring infographics. It uses shapes, text, and a few PNG images animated with the Puppet Pin Tool. My PC is quite powerful and has always handled this kind of workload.
While I'm working in AE, the playback speed seems normal, and I set the animation timings according to what I see (at any resolution from full to quarter). In the Preview panel, the frame rate matches the composition, and no frames are skipped.
Then I render my 2560x1440, 60 fps composition. I don't use interlacing, and the render settings are set to Best Settings. The composition is output in H264 with a bitrate of 10 Mbps. After rendering, it turns out that everything played back twice as slow in AE, and now I see a pretty fast animation.
Key point: I intentionally saved the project file as version 25 so I could test it in a previous version of AE. There the composition plays correctly, and it is really quite fast inside AE already, just like in the render.

My Specs:

  • Windows 11
  • CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700K
  • RAM: 32 GB
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti

The issue appears even if After Effects is the only programm running.

3 replies

Community Manager
Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 28, 2026

Hey there, Tigermovs47,

Thanks for the detailed report and for testing the same project in After Effects 25. The fact that it previews at the correct speed there, while the 2026 preview appears roughly twice as slow, is especially helpful.


Could you share the exact After Effects 2026 version/build and your NVIDIA driver version?

Also, please check the Preview panel and make sure the Frame Rate is set to Auto rather than a specific value such as 30 fps. Since your comp is 60 fps, a 30 fps Preview setting could produce exactly this behavior.Thanks for the detailed report and for testing the same project in After Effects 25. The fact that it previews at the correct speed there, while the 2026 preview appears roughly twice as slow, is especially helpful.


Could you share the exact After Effects 2026 version and build, as well as your NVIDIA driver version?

Also, please check the Preview panel and make sure the Frame Rate is set to Auto rather than a specific value such as 30 fps. Since your comp is 60 fps, a 30 fps Preview setting could produce exactly this behavior. Sorry for the frustration.


Thanks,
Kevin

Tigermovs47
Tigermovs47Author
Participant
August 28, 2026

Hi, Kevin.

Thank you for your reply.

 

AE Verslon 26.3.0 (Bulld 87)

NVIDIA driver version 616.56

 

In Preview panel everything is set up to default: frame rate is auto and skip is 0.
Moreover, when I set the skip value to 2, I can “simulate” the correct playback.

Community Manager
Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 29, 2026

Hey Tigermovs47,

Thanks for checking. The fact that Frame Rate is set to Auto, Skip is 0, and setting Skip to 2 makes the animation appear closer to the correct speed is interesting.

Could you try one more test? Create a new 2560x1440, 60 fps composition in AE 26.3, add a simple shape, and animate its Position from one side of the frame to the other over a few seconds. Does that preview slower than the same animation after rendering?

If the issue occurs in that simple test as well, that would indicate the problem isn’t specific to the Puppet Pin animation or the original project.

Thanks,
Kevin

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