My preview window is completely black only on certain projects, and other smaller problems.

[Lukas15C2]

The preview window is completely black, but only on certain projects. In addition, when I press the play button in the preview window,  AE crashes, and whenever I try closing AE or even opening a different project, it crashes/goes not responding.

I haven't tried anything for the 2nd and 3rd problems yet, but in terms of the preview window being black, I have tried downgrading the version of AE, uninstalling and reinstalling, updating graphics drivers, reloading past autosaves, resetting preferences, purging media and disk cache. I have tried pressing buttons like region of interest, toggling the eye button on the preview window as well, and I don't have caps lock on.

PC Specs:
Dell XPS 8940

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz, 2904 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)

Primary GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
Secondary GPU: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630

RAM: 16.0 GB (15.7 usable)

OS: Windows 10 Home

[Mylenium]

As much as you may not like it, but the answer is still the same boring one: You have to fiddle with your graphics driver and its settings to get hardware acceleration working. realyl not much more to say than that. I know it's annoying, but there's simply no magical cure for these types of issues.

Mylenium

[Lukas15C2]

Any tips in how I would go about doing that?

[Lukas15C2]

I've been at this, changing settings and fiddling with the driver settings for almost an hour now, to no avail.

[Julian Petschek]

Do you have caps lock on? that will disable the preview.

[Julian Petschek]

oh - just saw ur original post. hmm.

[Lukas15C2]

After some more fiddling, the preview showed up, but when I closed out of the program and reopened it, it went back to the same black screen preview.

[Ali Jaber]

In your screenshot region of interest is activated, anyway, what happens if you turn off hardware acceleration?

[Lukas15C2]

I've tried turning it on and off many times, each time with different driver settings. One time it did work, I know this isn't useful but I'm not sure if it was hardware acceleration on or off, but I do remember I was using the Studio graphics driver settings. Other than that I've really had no luck with the hardware acceleration setting, and since then I have tried Studio driver settings with hardware acceleration on and off, but it didn't work. 

[Lukas15C2]

I am going to try turning hardware acceleration on and off with the four graphics card drivers I have individually.

[Lukas15C2]

When I use the studio driver and have HA off, the preview window flashes black, but during the flashes, I see this:

But after closing and reopening the program, it just goes back to full black preview. Studio driver with HA on is just black. At this point I'm calling it a day. I'm really tired of this, I'll continue troubleshooting tomorrow.

[Ali Jaber]

As I see you are always trying with the same project, don't do that, try with a simple project using simple solids and photos, if it works add more elements and experiment. After all, Maybe the problem is with that specific video (codec, corrupted..), or the effects that you applied to it.

[Lukas15C2]

When I make a new project, it does seem to work as it should. 
With the project I was working on, I tried removing every effect and mask so I'm guessing it has nothing to do with effects. Could I recover it if it being corrupted is the case?

[Lukas15C2]

Is there a way I could fix my project though? And do you know why this might have happened, so I can avoid it in the future?

[Ali Jaber · Accepted solution]

If the problem is related only to that clip, try to transcode it in Media Encoder into Quicktime ProRes, and replace the clip in your timeline with the transcoded one