When I press spacebar to play preview, it takes about 5 seconds before playing?

[hasdhjas]

Never had this issue on my Windows 7 desktop, this is only on my brand new laptop running Windows 10... which should be a lot quicker and run AE better. Anyone else experience this?

I press space bar, wait about five seconds and then the preview plays even if it is already loaded.

Tried google and found nothing. This is on the latest version of AE but I'm using it for the first time on this computer. Specs: https://i.imgur.com/XpZmZfx.png

It makes no sense to me because everything else is fast except this.

Additional info: I'm using Mercury Software Only in settings if it matters. 500gb memory and disk cache are empty, purging affects nothing. Display drivers up to date. Working from local drives. Video footage is just small 1080p mp4 files recorded with OBS, so loading them is no problem once the video plays.

[Martin_Ritter]

You most likely have checked the "cache before playback" option in the preview panel.

If not, open info panel and have a look what AE is doing in this 5 seconds.

*Martin

[hasdhjas]

Hi Martin,

I checked both with no luck. Cache before playback was unchecked and the info panel shows nothing until the 5 seconds are up and the preview begins to play. 

[Martin_Ritter]

What happens, if you activate GPU acceleration and have you tried to lower preview resolution (if you do so, make sure Preview panel has the same resolution setting, or "auto")?

*Martin

[tristansummers]

It will almost certainly be audio caching.

We need to time animation to audio but after effects simply can't cope with audio, still.

Any tips appreciated. I usually turn off audio, cache preview, then turn it on again because AE can't do both at the same time for some reason

[aroundcenter]

Are you wearing wireless headphones? I just had this problem. It turned out to be the damn Airpods. 

[AtaurRaziq1]

This is the solution. Audio caching/audio device. I can scrub through it just fine no issues and immediate response but the moment i hit spacebar to actually have it preview it takes a bunch of time. I have mitigated the issue by disabling most audios in my composition (this is a video edit imported from Premiere).

Quite frustrating to see people assuming the easy fixes and just leaving it at that. Thanks for your contribution.