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VFXbear
VFXbear
Inspiring
December 4, 2019
Question

Stuttering preview playback (and strange "fix") in After Effects

  • December 4, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 9844 views

I'm currently on After Effects CC 2020, and there's a nagging problem while using the preview:
The playback stutters and sometimes drops to just below normal playback speed.
The clip I'm trying to view is cached (green line in Timeline), and yet : stuttering playback.
BUT here's the real funny thing : when you click and hold the Fast Previews dropdown menu, the playback levels out, and becomes rocksolid as it should be.  Let go of the window, and the playback goes back to stuttering.
I'm attaching a video where you can clearly see that my selected work area is completely pre-cached, there are no drop frames specified in the Preview panel.
Watch carefully when I click the dropdown menu : you can clearly see the arrow animation become smooth.  When I let go : back to choppy playback.

https://youtu.be/DqhW2vPm-GY 

 

My setup :
MacPro 5,1
2 x 3.46 Ghz 6-Core
32 GB Memory
Sapphire Pulse RX 580 (8 GB)

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    J
    jamesm46355552
    Inspiring
    October 12, 2020

    Glad to see i'm not going completly insane. I posted several times about this & didn't get responses from anyone. Ended up just going back to AE 2019 which solved the problem. However, no 2019 is behaving really weirdly. I have EXACTLY the same problems as your youtube video in AE 2020. top spec 2020 mbp. 

     

    Completely ridiculous that Adobe havent bothered to address this, or bothered to even answer your post. 

      VFXbear
      VFXbearAuthor
      Inspiring
      January 11, 2020

      UPDATE:

      it seems there is some sort of "window focus" bug in the cached preview.  Here's an interesting "fix" I discovered to remedy the stuttering:

      while the cached preview is running, click the preview options under the main screen and select the bottom "preferences" option. This will open a small breakout window with a drop down.  What's in it is not important, HOWEVER: your preview is now running smooth in the background without having to keep the preview options box clicked.

      This is definitely a coding bug.  Adobe, please look into this !!!

      pvanCOLOR
      pvanCOLOR
      Known Participant
      January 30, 2020

      has this been fixed for anyone? -- my previews are still running too fast and the fix didn't work for me

      H
      hunterh63283602
      Participating Frequently
      November 27, 2023

      It will likely never get fixed lol, it's been more than five years since Adobe started doing live RAM previewing instead of how RAM previews used to work so it will always be inconsistent for Windows users forever 

        VFXbear
        VFXbearAuthor
        Inspiring
        December 16, 2019

        Anyone else noticed this problem? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

          O
          OzM
          Participant
          December 5, 2019

          I'm having the same issue, and this Fast Previews trick works for me too.

          Many thanks! Seriously though - this bug is breaking the core functionality of After Effects, and has been happening on and off for years now. There should be serious resources put into fixing this.

          I'm using 16.1.3 running on a late 2013 Mac Pro running Mojave.

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