Adobe After Effect playback no in real time

Report · Oct 18, 2019

Hello, I would like to know why my Adobe After Effect is not playing back in real time. I have 15/29.7 fps.

The computer specs are:

CPU : Intel (R) Xeon(R) E5-1630 v3 4 cores 8 threads @3.70GHz

RAM : 64 GB (8 sticks of 8GB @ 2133MHz)

OS Disk : Samsung SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2 1 TB

GPU : Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080

When playing a video, the CPU is at 20% usage, RAM at 40% and GPU at 5%.

The cache before playback option is checked.

The “If caching, play cached frames” option is checked

The cache is on the OS disk (Samsung 970 SSD).

The playback is set to ¼ Resolution.

GPU Acceleration is on.

What else am I missing. I think that I should be able to play my video in real time with these settings.
Thank you for your help.

Report · Oct 18, 2019

As soon as it is caches into RAM, if should playback in realtime.

First make sure that the preview settings are meeting the hotkey in the dropdown (e.g. you set up everything for 0 Numblock, but always hitting space for preview, there another setup is active).

Then, with that kind of footage are you dealing? And what resolution do your display(s) have?

Last, consider a preference reset, fresh GPU driver re-install, fresh AE re-install.

*Martin

Report · Oct 18, 2019

What version of after effects you have?

i notice this issue before in the older version of CC but in the newer version it's fixed

Report · Oct 18, 2019

It really depends on your breadth of AE knowledge and the project you're working on,

First, you have to know that AE plays back NOTHING. It previews EVERYTHING. So hitting the space bar and expecting real-time is a crap shoot, especially if you're working in 4K or on a complicated comp. AE isn't a video editing application like premiere pro. It plain-old works differently.

The same thing goes for hitting the zero key on the numeric keypad. You may have a lot of memory, but if it isn't especially fast you'll have problems. If your disk cache isn't on a fast drive, you'll have problems.

So dive deeply into the Views and Previews section of AE help to learn all the strategies available for previewing. Rule #1 is not to hit the space bar.

Report · Oct 28, 2019

Hi all,

Thank you for your replies.

The issue was that the timeline was on a different screen than the preview screen.

As soon as we put everything in the same screen, the preview was in real time.