Screen goes black whenever I move my mouse

[jackthegiantslayer]

I have no idea what happened between the last and current beta, but this is unusable. Every move I make caused the screen to drop to black. I will see the screen in the preview window, but when I move the mouse or try to make changes everything in the preview goes black. WTF. Macbook Pro M1 Max fully maxed out on Monterey 12.2.1.

[JohnColombo]

Hi @jackthegiantslayer,

Thanks very much for reporting this issue. What is the version number of the Beta where you are seeing the Composition panel going black? The full version number is found on the About screen by choosing After Effects (Beta) > About After Effects... and should be 22.4.0.n, where n is the important build number.

Here are a few more questions to help us narrow this down:

• In the Project Settings, are you using GPU (Metal) or Software Only for video rendering?
• In After Effects (Beta) > Preferences > Display, does toggling "Hardware Accelerate Composition, Footage, and Layer panels" affect whether the Composition window goes black?
• What is the color depth of the project? Does changing it have any effect?
• Is the project using any color management?

Thanks again for reporting and for any further info you can provide,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[jackthegiantslayer]

Thanks for fast response. Version 22.4.0 (Build 46) I went into project settings and it was on Mercury Software Only. I switched to Mercury GPU Acceleration but no changes, also tried with the various combinations of color spaces and hardware acceleration on/off but the results are the same. If I move my timeline anywhere, it will take a moment to render that frame, I see it on screen for a second or more, then it goes black. It will play the video live with no going black until I stop the timeline. At this point I don't think its mouse related at all, it just seems to not want to maintain the output in the preview window.

[jackthegiantslayer]

I will also try rebooting and relaunching a few times, as that has strangely cleared up some random bugs.

[jackthegiantslayer]

Sorry one more possible complication, I use my Macbook as the secondary monitor to an LG HDR 27 inch 4k display connected via USB-C to a DisplayPort. Has worked flawlessly so far.

[jackthegiantslayer]

Thank goodness the stable build of AE went M1 native this week, otherwise I would be in quite a jam. I do wish you would port over separate xyz coordinates soon, but at least it's stable and no longer pinwheels on shape layers.

[JohnColombo]

Hi @jackthegiantslayer,

Thank you for those details. Does the bug occur in any project, only in certain projects, or with empty projects?

I'm asking because we have recently found ( and fixed) an issue where collapsed transformations on a pre-comp could cause the Composition panel to go black. Please see if disabling collapsed transformations in your project helps with the issue. The fix should be in a Beta build coming to the Creative Cloud app soon. 

Thanks again for reporting this issue,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team