After Effects

Why AE is still in 2026 absolutely garbage and unoptimized? Why at more than 70$ moth is still full of bugs? Why rendering is still underusing the machine? Why adobe? Why dont you destroy the program and rebuilt from zero? Years, more than 12 years working daily with it and every day I have to FIGHT with the software, every day. Every day I discover a new tricky way to solve a NEW problem. 

Sooo, I am struggling with this animated logo I did for a client and they asked me to deliver a .WebM (which is a new type of file for me). Somehow it shows a grey outline to the animation which is not visible on the original .mov (pro ress 444 alpha). I tried multiple ways of exporting it into WebM but whatever I do it keeps showing this outline. How-the-hell do I remove this and make it a clean animation like the original?? I got asked for WebM by developers but open to any alternative if that's what it takes 🤓 Thanks! 

Am I blind or going crazy? It’s been a while since I’ve worked with non-square pixel footage, but didn’t the Toggle Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction button used to be at the bottom of the comp window? Where’s it gone? 

I am relatively new to AE, but havent had this issue before. I have a few files that simply crash when trying to open on mac. They get to about 40% (although that varies slightly file to file, but seem to be in that region), but then just get the spinning beach ball and they dont progress. I have a PC too, so installed AE on that and the file opens instantly with no issue. Resaved the file from the PC version, tried to open that on Mac but crashed again. I have tried;• Opening file from different locations on the computer• Safe Mode• Empty Caches• Reset Prefs• Uninstall, restart, reinstallBut nothing works. Baffled, especially where it opens immediately on PC, which would rule out file corruption. Files were all created on the same Mac that now wont open them.Any ideas?

Using paint brush tool, when you draw a stroke, set the stopwatch to animate the path then skip forward in the timeline and with current brush item selected and you draw a new stroke a path key frame should be created and there then should be an interpolation between keyframes of the stroke. This no longer works in 26.5 instead a new brush item is created when you have a brush item selected and you skip forward and draw a new stroke. Working normally as of 26.2.1 (Build 2)

Hi everyone,I’m having an issue with preview playback in After Effects. The composition starts caching normally, but when I play it back, the preview still stutters and some of the cached frames seem to be rendered again instead of playing smoothly.I’ve already tried lowering the preview resolution and clearing the cache, but the behavior is still there. The composition is not particularly complex either.Is there a Preview or cache setting I should check that could be causing After Effects to rebuild frames during playback?I found this related discussion about cached frames being re-rendered during Preview.

Hi,Hopefully I can describe this correctly…I’m essentially looking to pair/join the bottom anchor points of the green rectangle with the top anchor points of the orange rectangle, so that I can animate the boxes changing their depth up and down whilst the overall group never changes height or width.Does that make sense?Can anyone help with this?CheersSteve  

currently my project is just two solid layers and two text layers with no animation, my preview resolution is set to third. Despite this when I want to playback the project by pressing the space bar it just buffers/freezes and cant seem to play it back for me. I have cleared the media disk cache very often and even made it so it will use my ssd to store cache instead of my local drive? For context I have a macbook pro 2019 which I recently updated to Tahoe? its an intel core aswell which ive heard might not be good for adobe? as you can tell idk much and am not a tech person im just a graphic design graduate tryna develop my skills and get a job in this crazy job market.anyways, if anyone could help me figure out how to fix this/make my ae run a bit smoother it would be great thanks! 

I am using Advanced 3D to make an animation of a smartphone. The phone is a glb Model. Animation works fine. But when i use Depth of Field in the 3D camera, the model parts get slightly see-through. For example, looking at the back of the phone the front screen is suddenly slightly visible. This is not happening when DoF is turned off.Any suggestions how to fix this. I need DoF for this animation.So far the new 3D options in AE are pretty great and render fast, but there are still a lot of quirks and annoying things that don’t work or need complicated workarounds (no motionblur, not working with adjustment layers, etc.) 

I’m a Creative Cloud subscriber. I use After Effects 24 because it runs much better than other versions with the Insta360 footage I work with. However, I haven't been able to open it for the past two days. I really need to get version 24 running again. It simply closes while still on the splash screen and fails to launch. I’ve already tried everything I could find on forums.Intel 13th Gen i7-1370064GB RAM2TB NVMe SSD

I’m experiencing a severe performance issue with After Effects 2025 on Windows:as soon as I open the program, RAM and Disk usage instantly jump to 100%, even with an empty project.This happens with:No project loadedA blank projectOnly one empty compositionClean installation of AENo plugins installed (fresh install)The program becomes unusable and the entire system slows down heavily.1. Main symptoms RAM → 95–100% usage immediatelyAfter Effects alone consumes nearly all of my 32 GB RAMEven without any project, layers, effects, or mediaWindows becomes slow after opening AE Disk → 80–100% usageDisk usage spikes to the maximumStops only after killing Adobe background processes, but RAM remains maxed outAfter Effects sometimes locks the NVMe at constant high read/write usage (70–100 MB/s)2. Adobe background processes involvedThese processes reopen automatically even after being closed:Adobe Dynamic Link Manager 2025Adobe TeamProjectsLocalHub 2025Creative Cloud Interprocess Service (32-bit)H

The Object Matte tool initially worked correctly in this project and I was able to identify and isolate several cars in the footage very accurately. After working for a while, however, it suddenly stopped functioning properly.Now, when I hover over a car, After Effects still appears to recognise the object and highlights it correctly. But when I click to confirm the selection, one of two things happens: The entire frame/layer becomes outlined in purple, as if Object Matte has selected the whole image instead of the car. Nothing happens at all and no object matte is created. The same problem can also occur when using the brush selection.I have already tried restarting After Effects, reopening the project, clearing memory and disk cache, reopening the footage in the Layer panel, switching tools, resetting preferences and trying again from frames where the tool had previously worked. None of this has resolved the issue.This is particularly frustrating because the exact same footage and

Dear Adobe Support Team,I am currently developing a Premiere Pro C++ plugin. We are creating a plugin that is intended to be localized in Chinese. However, when modifying the PiPL file to define the Name and Category fields, we have encountered issues with using Chinese characters:If we set the Category to Chinese, the plugin can be built, but the displayed text in Premiere Pro becomes garbled.If we set the Name to Chinese, the project fails to build entirely.Could you please let us know if there is an official way to support Chinese characters in the PiPL file, or if there are recommended best practices to handle plugin names and categories in non-ASCII languages?Thank you very much for your assistance.Best regards,

in After Effects 26.5 custom controls feel a lot slower than the same controls in AE 25.In After Effects 26.5, PF_Event_DRAW for an effect's custom UI in the Effect Controls panel is delivered at about 10fps for as long as the mouse is captured in a send_drag drag. The same plugin build on AE 25 receives 40fps under identical conditions. Hovering is unaffected — 26.5 delivers 90–130 there, which is faster than AE 25.You can reproduce the issue with any plugin shipped with AE that features custom parameters, for example “Curves”. I tried to fiddle around with update flags and working around the drag system but was not able to find a solution or any significant improvement.This is what I’m working with:Windows 11 Pro 26200, NVIDIA GPU. Effect uses PF_OutFlag_CUSTOM_UI, PF_OutFlag_SEND_UPDATE_PARAMS_UI, PF_OutFlag2_SUPPORTS_SMART_RENDER, PF_OutFlag2_SUPPORTS_THREADED_RENDERING. Custom UI drawn via PF_GetDrawingReference + the Drawbot suites, on an arbitrary-data parameter.Here’s a video s

Issue #1:I used to change the state of the On/Off icon for an effect with no restrictions. The state would change as fast as I could click the button. Now, I must move the cursor off the eye icon and back on to change the state. Steps to Reproduce:Add any effect to a layer. Click the eye icon next to the effect name in the Effects Control panel more than once per second. The state (on/off) of the effect does not change. The faster the eye is clicked the less likely it is to change states.It seems like moving the cursor off of the eye icon then back on resets the eye icon’s ability to be changed.  Moderator: Unrelated bug report moved to separate post:. 

Manually changing the position of a guideline now requires an additional step.  Steps to Reproduce:Add a guideline to a composition. Right click it, and select “Edit Guide”.In the old Edit Guide dialog box, I used to be able to press the Delete key one time, type the new number, press Enter, and the guideline would move without ever having to click the box. Now, I have to highlight the FULL text in the text box and delete it, then type the new number.  

So as you can see, in this particular project, the timeline is ghosted, when you mouse over it, some of the timeline comes back, then if you click elsewhere, the timeline vanishes again. I’ve deleted the cash files, no effect. The really strange thing is other projects do not do this, I get these random ones that just won’t load. You can enter text on the playback but you can’t select anything in the timeline. Vanishes as soon as you attempt to mouse over it. I am working with the latest AE 26.5. Any ideas? And don’t come back with add the comp to a new comp, that does not work and it’s a workaround.