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DustinInToronto
Known Participant
August 17, 2023
Question

Unexplained choppy video preview of timeline

  • August 17, 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 333 views

Hey everyone,
I've been experiencing a very odd issue with video playback of my timeline in After Effects.
The playback outright just stays paused, and some clips just jump back and forth repeatedly while playing back. I am a bit out of ideas on how to fix this or what it could be.

I should note this is happening on my brand new system, my previous system had no issue with this exact same footage.

No effects have been applied to the footage, just plopped on the timeline, and the preview looks like this. 
I have cleared all cache, reinstalled the app, and tried playback in all playback quality settings.

I have screen recorded a video to show what is happening.

Here are the tech specs of my system and the footage files:
CPU: Intel i9-13900F
Motherboard: Asus ProArt Z790 Creator WiFi
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 128GB DDR5 @5600 MHz
SSD: Samsung SSD 990 Pro
OS: Windows 11 Pro 22H2
AE Version: 23.6.0
Video files: HEVC (H265) - They play back fine in Windows Media Player and VLC.

Any advice that could point me to where I can try to solve the issue would be greatly appreciated!

Dustin

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

August 17, 2023

This looks like a decode issue. Can you try turning off hardware decode from the Import preferences? Make sure to clear your cache (memory and disk) to make sure you aren't rendering back the previously cached frames. 

 

DustinInToronto
Known Participant
August 17, 2023

This seems to be exclusive to HEVC H265 files from my DJI Drone. I have already installed the Microsoft HEVC codec from the Microsoft store - It just seems that After Effects has issue with the videos

DustinInToronto
Known Participant
August 17, 2023

There isn't anything out of the ordinary in task manager - GPU, CPU and RAM all relatively low usage during timeline playback. I have also switched disks for the footage, project and cache - all on super fast SSDs.

DustinInToronto
Known Participant
August 17, 2023

Thanks for this! I failed to mention that my GPU is the Nvidia RTX 4070 running the latest studio driver. After Effects is also updated. I will monitor task manager to see if i can identify anything.

Mylenium
Legend
August 17, 2023

Standard answer: Update your graphics driver, check the hardware acceleration settings. that aside it looks liek something is messing with your cache and/or disk IO and AE has a hard time loading your footage. monitoring task manager/ resource monitor would be a good place to start.

 

Mylenium