Crash during playback [Was:HELP!!]

[liamz12560014]

I am trying to play back a 10 minute video in Adobe After Effects cc 2019, but when I try to play it, my Macbook Air 13 inch, gives me the infinite loading lollipop and I have no choice but to force quit After Effects. It has happened previously with a 6 second clip and eventually after force quitting and reopening over and over it stopped. It has suddenly started happening after I wiped my computer and reinstalled everything. I need a solution!

Computer specs: Macbook Air 13 inch, with 52 gb of free storage out of 121 gb in total.

[Andrew Yoole]

After Effects is not designed to play back video. It loads every frame into RAM before playback, which is both slow and requires lots of RAM.  I'm guessing your MacBook Air probably only has 8 or 16GB of RAM, which isn't much for After Effects to build long previews.

If you're previewing more than about 10 seconds at a time you aren't using After Effects the way it's designed to be used.  You should be using a non linear editor like Premiere Pro.

That said, After Effects shouldn't crash if you preview video.  What are the specifications of your source footage?  Container, format, codec, resolution, frame rate, overall file size, where did it come from?

[liamz12560014]

I wasn't planning to make it last for 10 minutes, I was gonna make it like a minute or 2 long, as a quick "watch me edit" video but it won't load and it forces me to force quit AE and start again.

Anyways, the video specs:

223.9 mb of storage

It's a quicktime movie

Its extension is .mov

Its dimensions are 1440 x 900

Frame rate is 27 - 30 fps I would assume.

Codec is H.264

And it was a screen recording that came from my computer.

[liamz12560014]

Also, After Effects doesn't even try to preview every frame like normal. It just gives me the loading lollipop and never does anything after that, therefore leaving me to force quit the software.

[Andrew Yoole]

If you load a different video file from another source into After Effects, does AE still crash?

[liamz12560014]

Yes it does.

[Andrew Yoole]

But both these files play okay in Quicktime player?

My first step would probably be to remove and reinstall After Effects.

[liamz12560014]

I tried doing that and it didn't work at all.

[Andrew Yoole]

What didn't work?  Playing in Quicktime?  Or reinstalling AE?

[liamz12560014]

Reinstalling After Effects didn't work, and playing it in quicktime did.

[Andrew Yoole]

If you create a comp that only contains still images, does that allow you to preview?

[liamz12560014]

No it doesn't

[liamz12560014]

After a second test, I waited for a solid 20-30 minutes and eventually After Effects played a 20 second clip.

[liamz12560014]

So you just gonna ignore me?

[Dave_LaRonde]

Absolutely not!  Here's the help you so desperately need!

After Effects Help | After Effects Get Started

[liamz12560014]

That doesn't help

[Andrew Yoole]

Sorry for the slow response.  I'm not ignoring you, but do have to duck out of the forums occasionally to earn a living.  🙂

Given all the earlier suggestions have yielded no positive results, here's what I'd do in your position:

1 - Does your machine play video reliably in Premiere Pro?  If no, go to 2.  If yes, go to 3.

2 - Install the trial version of FCP.  If it plays video files reliably, call Adobe support.  If it  beach balls, go to 3.

3 - Back up all your data, erase and format your hard drive and reinstall the OS from scratch.  Install the Adobe CC suite before anything else and test.

Over the years on this forum I've been told I'm a bit over-zealous telling people to format their drives and start again.  But it solves so many issues, and takes 30-45 minutes to do - much faster than trouble shooting issues for days.

[Rameez_Khan]

Hey liamz,

It would be helpful to know about your computer's configuration. I understand After Effects is freezing on you but is it crashing too? If yes, do you get any error messages or a crash log? I assume it's getting too much for your MacBook Air to handle.

How much memory is allocated to After Effects? You can check that under Preferences > Memory

Additionally, what's the exact version of After Effects that you're using? FAQ: How to find the exact version of After Effects you're using?

Let us know.

Rameez