After Effects 2020: Preview locks up program

Report · Nov 07, 2019

After updating to17.0.0, preview now locks up the program, making it unuseable.

Switching back to 16.1.3 "works" (though with the non-realtime playback issue posted earlier🙄).

In the video example, where the cursor goes crazy, is where I'm trying to click anywhere on the After Effects interface.

Edit: Adding system specs...

Windows 10 Pro

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core 3.00 GHz

128 GB RAM

Samsung 2TB 970 EVO SSD (x2)

100 GB After Effects Disk Cache

Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti (x2)

GeForce Driver 441.12 (11/04/2019)

And, this was happening from "first run" of the program (no custom settings or changes from install).

Report · May 14, 2020

Despite multiple approaches and attempts to resolve this, I am still having this issue with the latest version of After Effects, making it basically unusable. After reading about some potential issues with the latest Nvidia Studio drivers (442.92), I tried reverting back to 431.86, and still see the same playback issues with After Effects 2020 (now updated to 17.0.6 since my original post). Attempting to further narrow-down the source of the problem, I re-installed After Effects 2019 (16.1.3), to see how it runs under those same earlier Nvidia drivers. In short, it behaves as expected. I'm attaching here examples of a test file running real-time preview under both versions of After Effects, so you can see the perfomance difference first-hand. Note that I had to force-close 2020, as the entire interface is locked up during playback, with no way to stop (no keyboard shortcuts work either). This is super frustrating, has me stumped, and I would GREATLY appreciate if someone could assist me here.

After Effects 2019:

After Effects 2020:

Report · May 14, 2020

Just FYI, I tried the same test with both 2019 and 2020 under Nvidia's current drivers (442.92) and am attaching here. 2020 behaves the same, with extrememly slow playback and a locked interface. Noteably, 2019 also plays back MUCH slower than under the 431.86 drivers (though does not have the "lockup" issue 2020 has):

After Effects 2019 - Nvidia 442.92 drivers:

After Effects 2020 - Nvidia 442.92 drivers:

Report · May 21, 2020

Sigh... Was hoping 17.1 might resolve this, but unfortunately not.

Still behaves exactly the same. Still stuck with using 16.1.3.

😔

Report · Jun 11, 2020

I am having the same issue and it is causing me to push back deadlines and our company lose money. Just uninstalled Creative Cloud using the tool and wiped all graphics drivers. Still no solution. I have Intel Intergrated Graphics and AMD FirePro ... so at least you know it isn't a Nvdia graphics driver issue.

I have noticed a few things:

WIN+D a few times can break the looping cycle.
Sometimes turning on CapsLock will help since it tells AE that it can't render frames when it is enabled.
Rendering is fine but playback causes the issue. Stopping the rendering by clicking on the timeline head helps not trigger it. But if the RAM preview is done, you're effed because it will start the playback loop.
And lastly, Adobe needs competition.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

Same problem here. Totally random as to when it happens.

I've been using AE for almost 20 years now. It hasn't gotten any faster in the last 5. In fact, it's gotten significantly buggier. I spend so much time trying to trouble shoot silly problems.

Might be time to start learning fusion.

Report · Jun 13, 2020

So, my brother-in-law just told me that his solution for this was to go back to the prior Nvidia driver.

That fixed it for him. Haven't tried it myself, but I'm hoping to this coming week.