After Effects playhead not working properly

[imcaleb]

Hello!

I've been having a reoccurring issue with After Effects and the playhead. When I hit the spacebar to preview my comp, the Composition Window previews the composition just fine, but the playhead doesn't move and I don't get the red current time indicator while the preview is playing. Then, when I pause playback, the blue playhead does not update, and spacebar does not work for previewing my comp until I manually click and drag the playhead around in the timeline.

Resetting After Effects temporarily fixes the problem, but the issue shows back up after working in the project for a short time.

I had this problem in 17.1.0, and it persists in 17.1.1

My specs:

OS: Windows 10

Processor: Intel Core i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70 GHz

Installed RAM: 64GB

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

After Effects Version: 17.1.1

I attached a video of my screen when the problem occurs, and I will also attach a dropbox link to my After Effects project. Any help on this is greatly appreciated.

AE Project: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fj0dmnezt5fzn9w/Text%2005-08.aep?dl=0

[imcaleb]

Solved my own problem - reinstalling After Effects fixed everything.

Edit - Problem persists, but only after opening this After Effects file again. Anecdotely, it seems to be a problem with this file. Not sure how to fix.

[15m20]

I've been encountering this a lot - it mainly seems to be happening when a project is either opened on a different device or, most recently, after transferring it to a different drive on the same device.

Two examples:

1) A collegue sometimes sends me projects and the issue is present for myself but NOT for them.

2) I have a project which was working fine - I've just transferred it to a different drive and the issue is present.

Tried everything suggested that I can find on the community but no dice.

ALTHOUGH - I've reinstalled AE and it did seem to fix it. If it's persisting then it's definitely a bug.

@imcaleb did you happen to find the cause of this? I've got simiar specs to yourself.

Thanks

[brianbbb]

I was having this problem a lot with a large project, I noticed my drive with the footage for the projects was nearly full, cleared off some space, and that seems to have helped - for now. My results are not completely scientific though - Windows also forced an update when I was dealing with this, so that may have something to do with the fix.

[brianbbb]

Well, nevermind my comment above. It's still happening.

[jasperk1]

Still having this problem with v18.4.1. Restarting or reinstalling temporaily fixes it but it always seems to come back. I've dealt with this issue on and off since v16. Fixing it doesn't seem to be high on the priority list.

[Smark Designs]

Good day there mate, did some digging on how to fix this stuff because I'm having the same issue as well,

it may be a bit irrelevant now since it's 2 years posted but try deleting some of your files inside your ae project

(i know it sounds stupid) but i notice that when the project exceeds 1mb that problem will start afterwards, try saving a copy of the project and delete the unused ones and try opening the file again after you clear some cache.

[Ignatz Johnson Higham]

Also have this problem, appears to be a major bug with the UI.

[Mohem]

I have the same problem in After Effects whenever I use Dynamic Link in Premiere Pro.

Pr 23.5

Ae 23.5

12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900HK 2.50 GHz
RAM 64.0 GB
Windows 11 Pro
21H2_22000.2176

[Prllnce]

Same thing here, I've literally tried everything there is to try.

Pr 24.1
AE 24.1

Somehow large projects with many files (especially 4K) seem to cause serious problems.
One thing I did, that not really fixed the problem but stopped ruining my mood, was basically creating a new project whenever I start to realize that AE is starting to mess around.