Playhead or Preview Time not syncing across all sub comps?

[Roballen.]

Doing several animations with mutiple characters layered in a main comp. Each character is in its own individual comp. I have a viewer open for the main comp and each of the individual character's comps. When I adjust the playhead in the main comp the preview time for each sub comp updates to the new playhead time. When I am working in a character's sub comp and adjust the playhead the time preivew for that character's comp updates and the time preview for the main comp updates to the new time BUT the other character's comp time preview does not update! How do you make the playhead position or preview time sync across all sub comps? It is really important to be able to adjust one character in relation to another and see how they are reading together in the main comp. 

I have have the Synchronize Time of All Related Items preference checked but that is not working for the subcomps. 

Is this a new problem? I don't remember this being a issue in years past. 

Any assistance will be appreciated. 

[Roballen.]

 

[Ali Jaber]

This usually happens if you have a duplicated comp in your main timeline and the duplicate is shifted in time, this will frustrate AE and cause a shift in synching

[Roballen.]

Thank you for your reply. I don't think the scenario you describe is what is causing this problem. Both character sub comps start at time 00:00 in the main timeline. If I move the playhead in either sub comp the playhead in the other sub comp gets out of sync because it does not update. Getting them to all update every time a playhead is moved is what I want to be able to get after effects to do.

[Ali Jaber · Accepted solution]

Aha, try this: copy sub comp1 into sup comp 2 and hide it, this way all comps are related now and should synch together

[Roballen.]

THANK YOU! that forces them to be in sync. 

That is crazy kludge but it works. Not sure why they wouldn't just be in sync or have a preference to make them sync or not. 

[t_pauli]

m a g i c!

thanks a lot, this was driving me crazy

[Ali Jaber]

You are welcome!

[Filsmith]

I have a solution for a slightly different cause that might be plaguing someone else that needs a fix to this problem.

To anyone else reading this, who may be frustrated, make sure that all of your compositions are set to the same frame rate. A very typical thing for someone using After Effects for video work. I constantly have a final comp of 4k that is 29.97 frames and non-drop frame. However, I bring in native documents that are odd dimensions and intended for print. So those nested comps typically default to 30fps which over time will cause my comp timelines to fall out of sync by a few frames. 

Hope this helps someone with that same issue.