Layers not showing in preview panel

[Sibley Thomas]

I have a basic understanding of After Effects, and I can make a basic video no problem. But now I have a new laptop that is quite capable of doing the work, there seems to be a problem with the preview panel.

If I restart the machine I can go into AE and make a new comp, but it will only work for a short time as you can see from the first screenshot, the panel just freezes and won't change. If I then load a new completely different project, the panel will still show the image from the previous project where it froze. 

I tried the old restart and opened a different project that has audio....same again, it froze. But when I hit the space bar the audio played, and when I scrubbed through and started it at a different point in the project it played the appropriate audio for that section. 

Scrolling over the window where the images should be you can see in the info panel the RGB colours change to what they would be should there be an image there. So I am at a loss and hoping that someone can give me an idea of what is going on. 

Thank you kindly in advance.

[Jose Panadero · Accepted solution]

Try to deactivate hardware acceleration for composition panel.  Enter into After Effects Preferences (Under Edit menu) and choose Display > Deactivate Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer and Footage panels option. Then go to Edit > Purge > All memory and disk cache.

Other things you can try:

- If you are using a dual monitor setup, try to move the composition panel to the other monitor

- Deactivate hardware acceleration for video processing and render under File > Project Settings

- Be sure to update your graphics card driver to the latest version available.

[Sibley Thomas]

Ahhhh yesss! Sir, you are a gem! Thank you! This worked a treat, and I can now get stuck in to my new project.

Thanks again 🙂