cached preview needs 2 or more frames to play back

[hillaby@bluewaterbaptist]

Okay i know that this question has been asked probably a million times by now, but since the adobe support is absolute trash it looks like I'm going to have to ask again here to see if i can get any help regarding this issue. I keep getting an error saying "after effects error: cached preview needs 2 or more frames to play back".

No matter what i seem to try it keeps coming up. I cant figure out at all why it is doing it. I've done literally everything i can think of, and Ive done multiple reinstalls, however no matter what i try it keeps happening. At first when i do a reinstall nothing will happen, i can have maybe one comp and it'll work fine, but the minute i go above one comp/precomp the error pops up, and then will continue to appear on every single project regardless of the size after that.

Im starting to regret getting involved with this program, as this error or bug makes the program virtually unusable.

Does anyone have any sort of solution to this issue?

[Emma5FFE]

I'm here looking this up in 2021 with the most up to date version, so that's clearly not the case..

[Vibrant_judge5DE4]

No. 5 months later and I'm still getting this error.

[sanjayk27454534]

this can defenetly fix your all cache related problem

Purge RAM Cache (Memory)

Change RAM Reserved for Other Applications

well follow this guide this will definetly fix your issue

hear is the link

(( how to Fix the 'Cached Preview' Error in After Effects | Sarcasco Server  ))

[kaitlinmackie]

For anyone else having this issue who may stumble across this thread in hopes of a fix-

I had this same problem and tried everything I found online (emptying cache, cleaning up my machine, giving myself writing preferences) and had the issue until I stopped using google chrome with adobe after effects. When I use safari as my browser, I have NO issues (yet!)

Unsure why this is, but using safari works for me

[impylse]

Had the same issue, nothing here helped.

Killed dynamiclinkmanager.exe and adobe qt server.exe and the issue went away. Not sure which one of those did the job.

Maybe someone finds this helpful.

[autumns47603349]

I'm having this issue as well. None of these suggestions help. I'd rather not have to quit AE every time this happens. I'm working on a very time consuming class assignment, and this bug is just adding more time to that.

A fix or a patch would be great.

[michaelf84839128]

This error drove me nuts today. Nothing I tried online worked.

But I noticed this after awhile..

The Work Area had mysteriously shrunk to nothing.

After fixing size of the Work Area this error went away.

[Steevy]

I had this error a few minutes ago. I Googled it and landed on this thread. I did the cache dump like a few suggested,  relaunched AE and i still had same error. I simply used "N" to trim my comp size and did a preview then error went away. Then i expanded my comp back to it's original size and continued work.

[maryb85155069]

Hello Adobe friends! I realize this response is long after the original post, but in case someone still has this problem I wanted to share how I fixed this issue for myself.

My solution was admittedly a little silly/embarrassing, but maybe someone out there can use it. Under the time ruler, is the "Work Area" bar with an adjustable start and end scrubber. Somehow, my end scrubber got adjusted to way up under 2 seconds, giving me the error of needing two frames. Once I moved it back to the end of my timeline, everything was back to normal!

This probably seems like an obvious thing to most experienced AfterEffect-ers, but personally, I forget about little things like that sometimes!

Hopefully this can help someone out there. I'll attach a screenshot to show what I'm talking about!

[tinydrtim]

THANK YOU! this has instantly solved my problem that just started yesterday. Is there anyway to get this pinned so people can check this first?

[Brian Bird]

Hey, if you found this thread looking to clear this message"cached preview needs 2 or more frames to play back," first check to make sure you haven't accidentally bumped the N key to set the out-point next to the in-point before trying all the excellent suggestions above. Would have saved me about an hour...

[GabrielaLeticia]

OMG Yes!!! This was it! Feel so stupid now.

[Emma5FFE]

While I'm not gonna count my chickens just yet, that was my problem at this precise moment. Thank you for sharing it and making me check!

[nicolajesteban]

In my case the issue was that I've activated the "vector" sign on a pre-composition. This somehow messed up the whole after effects. When I deactivated it again everything worked again. 

[MichellesInMotion]

Had this same issue in 2022 and this solution worked for me, thank you; any idea why this would be an issue to cause this error though?

[default5x9faph7mkqy]

The latest update does not fix this extremely annoying issue which means I can't preview in AE 17.6 or export through AME 2020.

Am on Windows 10 19041 on XPS 15 7590

Have just purged all memory & disk cache but no luck.

Ideas?

[Ronald Taipe]

Y si ya con nada se soluciona prueba con esto, es probable que esté muy pequeño y no esté llenando los suficientes fotogramas, solo agrandalo. ¡Más de media hora buscando que podría ser!, y era solo eso...