After Effects caches all frames during preview, but does not play back (Freezes)

Report · Jun 16, 2022

Hello,

Issue Description:

I have searched for this issue, tried multiple troubleshooting ideas, but cannot seem to find any similar issues or fixes that work.

I press play in the preview button
AE proceeds to cache all of the frames in my workspace (full green bar)
The play icon is displayed but I see no playback/no audio, and timeline marker does not move
The timeline marker just appears to freeze as shown below. You can see the preview status (square) acts as if it's playing, and all frames are cached, but the playback is just frozen.
If I press the stop preview button, the timeline marker will jump back 1 frame specifically
See below screengrab from this frozen preview:

It happens at any playback resolution (full/half/quarter/auto) and any location in my timeline.

The weird thing is I can get RAM preview to work properly upon my first initial startup of AE. Once I make more than a couple edits to my comp and try to preview though, the freezing playback issue occurs again. Only solution I have found to this freezing preview issue is restarting AE. It will work briefly again, but after a few edits - it then decides to freeze playbacks again.

What I have tried so far that has not fixed the issue:

-Purge all memory disk & cache

-Preview at lower/higher resolution

-Changing workspace area

-Edit > Preferences > Empty Disk Cache

-Edit > Preferences > Clean Database & Cache

-Update NVidia Drivers - They are currently on the latest version

-Using a seperate SSD for my cache folder (still using this, but does not help issue)

-Switching audio hardware from MME to ASIO (neither makes a difference)

-Changing between preview "loop" or preview "play once" (neither makes a difference)

-Other Preference Settings at a glance:

Computer Specs:

Any help is appreciated, I literally don't know what else to try with this and I can't preview anything, thank you.

Report · Jun 17, 2022

When you talk about using the play button, I realised I always use the keyboard shortcuts and it has been ages since I looked at the controls themselves. Spacebar (regular) playback trys to play everything immediately, but numpad 0 (and you can change all these settings) will cache the frames first before playing back and not play audio. I'll often preview using 0 first, before trying the regular playback.

Now this might not be the cause of your issues, one thing I did notice is that your PC has 16 Gb of RAM - which is the minimum spec these days. 32Gb is recommended. I think there was a performance requirement bump a year or two ago which upped the requirements.

Report · Jun 17, 2022

Hello,

Thanks for the response, I usually just click right on the play button in the preview panel instead of using a hotkey so I don't think that is an issue. I recognize my RAM is a bit below the requirements, but I am able to preview just fine (and quickly) when I first start up AE. It only seems to freeze my preview playback after a few edits are made each time. All other functions of AE seem to work very quickly and I experience minimal lag doing anything.

Report · May 01, 2023

I have been having this exact problem for the last couple of months. It feels like I have tried everything. Very frustrating. My specs include 32GB RAM

Report · Oct 16, 2023

Any solve to this folks? I am running into the same issue.

Report · Oct 27, 2023

That's not ideal, Joseph.

What's the version of After Effects you're using? Could you share your system specifications (CPU, GPU, RAM, OS version)?

We're here to help, just need more info.

Thanks,
Nishu