After Effects 17.1 Major Issue - RAM Preview Problem?

[parkerl28607177]

Hey all,

I'm really stuggling with an problem that just cropped up today. I'm working on a project and need to make adjustments to some text. When I went to do so today, I was unable to beacuse everytime I select the text tool and begin to type on the layer, it acts as if I never selected the layer and instead interprets my typing as keyboard shortcuts.

I suspect that is becuase of something going awry with the preview system. The rendering indicator bar is now constantly flashing which makes me think that it is probably taking the focus away from the composition window and back to the timeline. 

I've tried going back to version 17.0.6 but the bug persists. I've restarted, cleared cache, tryed other projects, none of that worked. 

I've included a screenshare of the problem so that hopefully you guys can help me out. 

Machine Specs:

MacOS Mojave 10.14.6

3.1ghz Intel Corei7

Radeon Pro 560 4gb ram

16gb 2133MHz LPDDR3

**Update** 

I became supicious that the comp size may have some bearing on the issue (It's for a video wall and is 7060x1080) so I made a 1080p comp as a test and the issue persits there as well.

[nishu_kush]

Hi parkerl28607177,

Sorry for your issue.

Is it happening in a particular project or all of them? Have you changed anything in your system recently, like installing a new program or a font?

Here's what you can try:

1. Change the renderer to Software Only (File > Project Settings).
2. Go to After Effects > Preferences > Display > uncheck Hardware Accelerated Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels.
3. Resetting the preferences of After Effects: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects/faq-how-to-reset-trash-preferences-in-after-effects/td-...

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Nishu

[parkerl28607177 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your help nishu_kush.

I tried going through each of those steps coupled with system restarts and none seemed to fix the problem unfortunately. After further inspection, I identified the source of the problem. 

In a precomp, I was using keylight and the camera tracker on a piece of stock footage. (.mov from Getty) When I delete the stock footage and precomp from the project, the issue stops in its tracks. (must be both, not one or the other) I'm not sure what about that combination of footage and effects was causeing the issue but i was able to issolate the problem to those few layers. My assumption is that it was something to do with the footage although I've used plenty of ProRes .mov's in AE before without issue.

Thanks again for your help and if there's anything thing I can provide the Adobe team to help them further diagnose the problem for other users, please feel free to ask.

[ConnorRyan]

THANK YOU FOR THIS -- (listen up please Adobe!!)

I was having a problem where after effects would slowly "cache" the frames, but no green bar would show, and it would never play back. Not sure how I was at long last able to find your thread but it is truly a Godsend. Deleting a camera tracker effect (which was disabled and not in use in any way) from a precomp solved my problem. I am in 17.5.1 (most update) which means this bug remains.

As a note, I also have prores in the project and in a composition, and I did not need to delete those to fix my issue.

Nevertheless, my sincerest gratitude!

[Shrunken]

Thanks for this.  I just ran into a problem with RAM preview as well, all of the sudden AE wouldn't playback anything, the green RAM preview bar would flash and flicker even when not trying to play back anything.  Playing back anything was impossible and everything would stutter.  I also noticed I couldn't get the bounding box on masks to work, it would just disappear right away.  I totally thought it was a hardware issue and spent a lot of time down that rabbit hole.  I also had an instance of warp stabilizer that had been turned off and that was the solution! just deleting it.