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briannam2005
Participant
June 26, 2019
Question

spacebar won't play back preview

  • June 26, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 27955 views

For a while I had After Effects cc 2018 and experienced no issues, until about 7 months into having it. I'm not sure what I did to cause this issue but whenever I pressed the spacebar on my mac to toggle playback of my preview, it would switch to the hand tool, and wouldn't play my preview no matter what. It didn't matter if I held or just pressed the spacebar, it would toggle between the pointer and hand tool. I even tried assigning a new shortcut in the preview pannel and just using the play button, but to no prevail. I uninstalled cc 2018 and switched to cc 2019, thinking that it might have just been a bug in the system I was using. For a month or so things went smoothly but a few days ago the same problem started up again. It's crucial that I'm able to use ae since it's my way of earning money. If anyone can help me please reply!

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    4 replies

    femis38104987
    femis38104987
    Participant
    November 30, 2020

    i also have the same problem went through all the comments and the solution proferred but couldnt solve it in my own case. i purge all the memory (Edit-Purge-All Memeory & Disk Cache....) it didnt work. Empty disk Cache and Clean Database and Cache (Edit-Preferences-Media & Disk Cache), still didnt work.
    What I did was that i ressaigned the shortcut to numpad 0 which worked for me. but i discovered that i could play the preview with numpad 0 and still pause with spacebar. Then i saw a reset button beside Preview and reassigned by shortcut to Spacebar and eveything was solved. I hope this is helpful to someone out there?

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    MLilla777
    Participant
    June 30, 2021

    I'm having the same problem. I did several tutorials, just to see if they would play with the space bar, and no problem, but when I try to create a file, myself, I can't play it with the space bar, and none of these solutions work.  

     

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    tristansummers
    Inspiring
    June 30, 2021

    It's an issue with premiere as well and restarting often fixes it. Often just toggling between applications can fix it. Suspects include audio or decklink or usb or midi, control surface etc. drivers conflict, ram or cache issues. Whatever goes wrong, space bar dies first. Get a full size keyboard and use numpad0. 

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    daniell2678229
    Participant
    November 18, 2020

    I had the same problem and managed to fix it by clearing my disk cache and RAM memory after restarting AE. Worth trying if you're still stuck. Preferences > Media & Disk Cache>Empty Disk Cache. To clear the RAM too, Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache.

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    hmmm5C1E
    Participant
    July 1, 2021

    omg thank you finally I can work on my edit- I'll keep this in mind if it does it again

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    emik79372412
    Participant
    December 11, 2019

    Hi, were you able to figure out and fix this issue? I'm having the same problem as well, and from what I can tell from my Google search, so are a lot of other people but nobody seems to have an answer. 

    My problem is the same as yours except in addition, when I try to close out of AE after this starts happening the entire system freezes. I have to use Task Manager to quit AE. And lately, even when I open up my project file, the problem is happening right off the bat, I can't even play it once. If you or anyone else has any insight to this problem, it'd be much appreciated! 🙂 

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      tristansummers
      Inspiring
      March 25, 2020

      I hope somebody finds out what triggers this soon! 

      CAn't think of any reason why AE suddenly won't allow itself to stop playing

        jacksneogen
        jacksneogen
        Inspiring
        April 2, 2020

        I'm having the same issue. Started a few days ago. AE will playback using the spacebar one minute, and then not the next. Did the reset preferences thing and that doesn't seem to help. Maybe time to uninstall and reinstall??

          Jose Panadero
          Community Expert
          Jose PanaderoCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          June 26, 2019

          You can assign another key for playback in the Preview panel, for example, you can use the "0" on your numbers keypad to playback the work area range. If you have tried with different software versions and that does not solve your problem, maybe the problem is in the keyboard, have you tried with another keyboard? Another thing that you could try is to delete the After Effects preferences file. Hold CTRL+ALT+SHIFT as soon as you open After Effects and you will be prompted to delete the preferences file.

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          briannam2005Author
          Participant
          June 27, 2019

          i have a macbook pro so i cant switch keyboards nor can i use the "0" on the numbers keypad. I will try the prefrences thing tho, thank you!

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