Preview Keeps Stopping Once Rendering Is Done In After Effects

[Meera5CDC]

I am so confused. My ae was completely fine till yesterday when the i couldnt keep previewing my project unless it was rendering it out. please watch the whole video I have attached. I do not know how to explain this problem in words, so sorry if there's any confusion.

[Jose Panadero]

Not sure what you are trying to tell us. AE cannot playback realtime if your layers have some effects or masks included. AE must cache the files into RAM (green line over your layers) and then, once cached it will be palyback in realtime.

[Meera5CDC]

thats the thing though: it doesnt play back real time after that cache is cleared up. it just hangs. please watch the end of the video.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

It looks like you are using After Effects as a video editing app. That's not what it was designed to do.

When the Ram preview reaches about 8 seconds it looks like your resources are filled up. The green line in the timeline is showing more in cache with holes and until those holes are rendered you may have problems getting a preview to start again.  I don't see much that isn't normal behavior in your project.

It does look a little odd when the preview hangs. Your Preview Panel is set to Work Area Extended by Current Time, but the work area appears to start at the first frame of the comp and extend beyond the visible end of the timeline. Try changing that option Work Area or Play Around. Try turning off Cache Before Playback. Something might be hanging up.

I always try and limit my comps to a single shot if I can. If I need to create a sequence in AE I limit that to a sentence or phrase. If it's a music video, it's a measure musical phrase, then I do the editing in an NLE like Premiere Pro. You end up with a lot more comps in a project but it's a lot more efficient in the long run. I'm currently working on a project that needs about 20 seconds of audio covered by things I can only do in AE. My longest comp is 4 seconds. I have 9 of them to cover the required edited sequence. I wouldn't think of trying to pull off all 20 seconds in a single comp because that comp would have more than 100 layers and by the time I got into it about more than 10 seconds the ability to fine-tune and edit would become incredibly frustrating and slow. You might consider breaking up your comp into much smaller sections.

[Meera5CDC]

but this doesnt make sense, i have been using AE as a video editing app for 2 and a half years now. all of my friends use it to make much more complicated effects too. it just now started doing this. and the preview only starts to hang when those "holes" are rendered fully as you can see. and okay, i will try changing that work area option and let you know. 

[Meera5CDC]

update: i changed the preview to Work Area instead of Work Area Extended by Current Time but it still doesnt work. however, this time an error popped up when i tried to play the preview and it started to hang, but it disappeared before  i could even read it. any idea what that could be about?

[Meera5CDC]

2nd update: i ended up shortening the work area to what i needed to preview just now (a small section of the whole comp) and it works fine. 

[Jose Panadero]

To let AE cache more frames you need more RAM. This way you can extend your work area. Another way to "have more RAM" is to change the resolution of your composition panel (set ant 50% in size and Half as resolution) so AE can cache bigger preview areas.